Echo musings

[Paul W. Frields]

I am running the latest Rawhide and had the following observations about
the Echo theme icons:

* The angle of the icons makes some of them difficult to visually
distinguish properly, especially with a bright blue emblem in front of a
gray icon.  Examples include the music file icon and the presentation
icon, even at the size seen by default on the desktop.  I also wonder
whether for some of these icons the backing "document" icon is really
necessary.  For instance, the video media files appear as a film reel,
which is very sensible, so I wonder why the music files shouldn't simply
appear as musical notes or similar.

* The amount of detail in many of the icons makes it hard to discern the
metaphor in many applications.  Cut, Copy, Find, Replace, and Print all
exhibit this problem.  Reply to All in Evolution is particularly
difficult, and menu items for Text Editor, Computer and Network don't
really work either for this reason.  I'm not sure how much of this might
be remedied by returning to the links Máirí­n posted about designing for
small sizes.

* The "New" icon in Evolution is very tiny for some reason.  I suspect
that's just a one-off problem easily solved.

* To extend one point made above, I wonder if it would be wise to try
the icon set with a different foreground color.  The blue currently used
does not lend itself well to emphasizing an emblem in front of a
gray-colored icon.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
      Fedora Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PaulWFrields
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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