After watching the Adobe CS5 launch broadcast, I was quite disappointed with the new Creative Suite branding. As a matter of fact, I am not a big fan of the previous CS icons, and I have never kept them on my dock for more than few days before swapping them with custom sets. This time around, it seems like they won't even last 24 hours.

I understand that it is unfair to subjectively criticize design work without looking into its objectives and constraints. So I went ahead and read Shawn Cheris -lead designer for Adobe's Desktop Brand team- piece over at Inspire, the official publication of Adobe Experience Design team. I was not convinced to say the least.

Our goal was to move beyond the monolithic expression of of the CS3 and CS4 systems and create a more dynamic language. [...] Additionally, we were told by the Brand Strategy team that the CS5 branding should represent "a shift"—this version needed to feel distinct, new, and “not to be missed". We had a challenge on our hands.

As words, that all sounds good. As graphics, it's another story:

If the guys over at Adobe were thinking that a book-style 3D effect and some tinted mnemonics were enough to represent "a shift", then they completely missed the point. To me, it is a step backward compared to the previous versions, where the high contrast between letters and backgrounds gave the set a refined look. This iteration of CS icons won't be missed for sure, but not for the initially intended reasons.