Iconography

We live in a graphical world, where people judge us by the fonts we use and the colour combinations on our web pages. Post-industrial culture demands that design is everything, with careful sculptured looks encasing the mass-produced gubbins that fill our homes and workplaces.

So what then are we to make of the current furore around Apple's new iTunes icon?

Designers around the world are up in arms about the shedding of the familiar compact disc-based logo in favour of a disc with a blue gradient fill and a stylised music note in the middle. Changing brand identity is hard, and and Apple's iTunes icon is one that's had significant exposure. Any change is going to have resistance, especially after all this time...

The new design isn't a bad one, either. It's clear and easy to read. It looks good on a Mac OS X dock, or the Windows 7 task bar. The semiotics work too, at least for much of what we use iTunes: the icon most definitely says music.

But there is a problem here, as iTunes most definitely isn't just about music. It's also about social networking, about video, about podcasts, and above all, about apps. That may be where the design issues come from - Itunes is now Apple's synchronisation desk hub for its cloud services (like Ping and the iTunes Store) and for its mobile devices (it's how you manage applications on iOS hardware). And that means any icon needs to encapsulate all that in just a few pixels.

To be honest, that's impossible. You'd just end up with something abstract and meaningless. So Apple has made the best decision it could, going for something clear and distinctive. It may not be the iTunes experience, but it still reflects Apple's brand values.

I like it.

Sadly, though, there is a real problem with the icon - or rather, in just how it's been implemented. Install iTunes 10 on a Windows 7 machine, and take a look at the mess that Apple's made of the status tray icon. It's been badly anti-aliased, which really causes problems on Windows 7, with its translucent task bar. The result is an icon that comes across as jagged and awkward, in contrast to Microsoft's smooth white system icons.

Here's a 5x zoom of the icon showing the problem:

That's a big oops and something that should have been caught in testing.

Still, it's something that can be fixed in the next release. Unlike many designers' hurt sensibilities.

Simon Bisson