Adobe CS3
User experience specialist, identity strategy, art direction, icon design, screen design, design, production: Ryan Hicks.
Contributors – project management: Michelle Richards, production coordination: Dina Pinza. Design and production help: Mike Levin.
CS3 management, creative direction, political air-cover: Rhett Woods, Michael Gough, Jim Christie.
Contributors – project management: Michelle Richards, production coordination: Dina Pinza. Design and production help: Mike Levin.
CS3 management, creative direction, political air-cover: Rhett Woods, Michael Gough, Jim Christie.
CS3 was an epic renovation of every Adobe and Macromedia product identity found throughout the desktop. The primary challenges were to develop a system to merge the Macromedia and Adobe product lines, and to tie the product icons together to work side-by-side harmoniously. Elements were created to maintain a 1:1 correlation between application, native file, and other high-level product ID touchpoints from install through workflow.To frame our approach, we asked tough questions of desktop software user's experience: how can we improve our user experience - major points being recognition, accuracy - and create a meaningful visual presence on the desktop. The answer came in a unique - and controversial - new interpretation for the role of "app icons" as representations of software tools.
We created a visual language based around color; it is flexible, extensive (and accommodating), and massively powerful. Product color choices were informed by historical associations as much as possible given the system now had to accommodate nearly a hundred products. This approach scaled from install experiences on down to tiny icons gracefully, incorporated itself into functional workspaces with meaningful contrast, and which ultimately unified Adobe's expansive product offerings.
Desktop product identity graphics for approximately 80 products, over a thousand individual assets in ico, icns, bmp, png, jpg, gif formats of varying specification.
New Product Marks (not including typographic mnemonics)
Document 'file' icons
Module and plugin icons
All these icons were drawn at five sizes to accommodate our supported platforms, which for CS3 included Vista and its new 256px icons.
What did we do next? Adobe CS4 Desktop >>
We created a visual language based around color; it is flexible, extensive (and accommodating), and massively powerful. Product color choices were informed by historical associations as much as possible given the system now had to accommodate nearly a hundred products. This approach scaled from install experiences on down to tiny icons gracefully, incorporated itself into functional workspaces with meaningful contrast, and which ultimately unified Adobe's expansive product offerings.
Desktop product identity graphics for approximately 80 products, over a thousand individual assets in ico, icns, bmp, png, jpg, gif formats of varying specification.
New Product Marks (not including typographic mnemonics)
Document 'file' icons
Module and plugin icons
All these icons were drawn at five sizes to accommodate our supported platforms, which for CS3 included Vista and its new 256px icons.
What did we do next? Adobe CS4 Desktop >>