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 more original sets made by awesome designers all over the place. 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 the initial objectives set by the designers as well as the constraints they had to deal with. 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.

So what do you think about the new icons? voice your opinion in the comments!

Update:

I have released my own replacement set, check it here!