Microsoft will change the icons of windows 10

Microsoft announced last week the update to its Office iconography, with new designs meant to reflect all the things people use Office for. Beyond that, Microsoft has big plans for its iconography, and a plan to standardize its icon style across Windows.

Microsoft works on redesigning all Windows icons

Microsoft wants a visual language that resonates emotionally across generations, that works across platforms and devices, and that echoes the kinetic nature of today's productivity. The design solution was to decouple the letter and symbol from the icons, essentially creating two panels, one for the letter and one for the symbol, which can be paired or separated. This allows familiarity to be maintained while emphasizing simplicity within the application.

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The new Skype icon, however, stands out compared to the others, with a letter and font that are different from the other designs. The OneDrive icon also seems quite vague, since it lacks a letter. Admittedly, "O" was already taken for Outlook, but it's unclear how useful the letter is supposed to be in this context anyway . Using color gradients, on the other hand, is quite smart. Excel, Word, and PowerPoint icons use gradients to mimic the types of layouts you commonly use within the application. The pie chart for PowerPoint is an inspired touch and even a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun.

Microsoft has made it clear that it will bring this design style to the entire company. It is a great task to build a common system and design 10 icons at the same time. This is the beginning of an intercompany effort to update all icons in the same style. A new version of Windows updated with the same iconography in a full upgrade from top to bottom would be interesting, and provides an opportunity for the company to clean up the design of its system.

Microsoft is a huge company and the efforts of graphic designers to create new logos will not conflict with code engineers who are attacking other parts of the operating system.

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