God Forbids if this is the new Trillian Logo

Just kidding. But apparently Adobe thinks so...

If you installed the Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta a few months ago, you probably thinks that it is a temporary icon...

No. This is it!!!

After you upgraded your computer from the 20th-century with Mac OS X or Windows Vista, both equipped with 128x128+ sized icons, all you can get from a creative software is a monolithic square.

This is not to say that I am against Minimalism. It is a noble attempt to integrate the two product lines with tens of products, from Adobe and the original Macromedia, under the same branding strategy.

Remember the older icons from Adobe? While the standard tools from the operating system would describe plainly what they do (e.g. Microsoft Paint is, apparently, a paint brush), the expensive tools are described with an abstract imagery to propose their superiority. For example, the icon of Adobe Photoshop 8 was a flying eye through a camera lens, and it described hardly what the tool does, though the branding designer would argue that the function of the tool is beyond your imagination, thus such imagery. A branded icon is 'sentimental': From the viewpoint of the company it describes their reach to the users, while from the viewpoint of the consumer it describes their pride in what they purchased.

Therefore, the design of the Adobe CS3 icons is so abstract that you cannot even imagine what the function of the tool is, or perhaps, Adobe thinks that it has become part of the human culture itself it will require no further explanation of what the tool does, thus flipping you a semantic two-letter combination. I would say that the ego of the company has grown beyond the level of software developer.

Minimalism is great if it is done like MUJI, which stands for "Good Products Without Branding" in Kanji. Here in the Adobe icons, Minimalism is employed in a totally opposite meaning: Maximum branding. While the minimal designs of MUJI products attempts to blend into your living room with coherent and simple materials, the minimal designs of the Adobe icons forms an uniform army on your desktop, screaming "You have been assimilated by Adobe so I want you to remember us all the time". Both resulted in coherence and clarity, which is the essence of employing Minimalism in a design, but their purposes are completely different.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I have been working on the famous bug #837 for a while now. That's why we have this icon talk right now. :)

Here in Disney Time

Hello all, thanks for your continuing support of this site! From time to time I received messages from new readers through the new Trillian Astra messenger. :)

Sorry I have not been updating the blog lately. I was in Hong Kong for two weeks to stay with family for Chinese New Year... (though that is not an excuse anymore now that I had sorted out most of the disasters (DMV horros) since I got back to work, I just needed to move my ass.) Highlights include visits to relatives, body check, dental cleanup, a great night with best friends, and a visit to... Hong Kong Disneyland - Hong Kong people's very own theme park with fireworks blasting every night. We stayed for two days so we got to see the fireworks twice.

The song "Disney Time" (MP3) by Jarvis Cocker sounded sarcastic when I first heard it in a Brooklyn Industries store, but after I went to Disneyland it turned out to be quite an honest song. Going to Disneyland is 'an awkward insight to be reminded about', and I was skeptical at first as well. But then, since my home city got its own Disneyland, why not pay a visit?

Perhaps it really contained something you don't want to be reminded about. Unless you are a hardcore Disney fan, which is much harder to find than a Star Wars fan or Japanese Anime geek, you will find a sense of resistance towards Disney stuff in the Generation-Y population. I am not sure why, but to me at least when I was a teenager, I was more indulged in saving the world with my robots or Final Fantasy Ultima Weapon. Or something 'serious'. Disney in the late 90's did suck, with its anime all trying to be hip and cool (e.g. the Pikachu rip-off known as Stitch), and Pixar producing the better crop but with characters not as memorable as the Disney princesses.

The games in Disneyland were fun and there were virtually no lines of waiting at all. All the crew spoke Chinese so it was quite intimate. The musicals ran hourly and brilliantly performed. And the best was the fireworks. Fireworks was, perhaps of its sound, blood-pumping by nature, and Disney knew it very well. Combined with lots of strings in the background music, classic scenes from the movie, and high-spirited quotes from the characters, I got a great tear-jerking experience. Yeah, it's gaudy and cheesy, but you know what, it worked. All those 'dreams' and experiences flashed back in my mind, my adolescent soul, 'deeply tortured' by reality, was rejuvenated with motivation and spirits once again.

There was something very positive about the animated movies from America between the 80's and 90's, such as American Tail or Beauty & the Beast, that is lost in the animated movies these days. There was a crap load of animated movies last fall season, I watched plenty of them on the plane, and none of them were particularly interesting. Some were like a fun roller-coaster ride, some were 3-d showoffs, and some were plain and without substances. People seemed to be more uptight these days embracing positive values, but much more paranoid about the negative things that may do harm to their illusion of their positive world; and the animated movies showed just that. It does not feel honest to people to be upright positive these days, or when it comes to positivity it always is mis-represented by overdosed laughters from characters with A.D.D.

So next time you decide to go to Disneyland, forget how badly they treat their workers, how environmentally unfriendly they are, or how your kids should be happy since you spent so much money flying there and staying at the resort, and how all fantasy elements are just man-made animatronics and made-up folklores... but simply embrace their modest side: It is ok to be gaudy about a dream.

Technorati tags: disney, jarvis cocker, hong kong disneyland