Not quite different enough


It has happened so many times already. I come across with a shockingly deplorable excuse of an user interface and want to take a screen shot of it. So I open the Start menu, glance the list of recently used programs and select the Microsoft Office Picture Manager from the list to start editing the screen shot... only to realize moment later that I have opened PowerPoint instead. Problem is that the icons of both PowerPoint and Picture Manager are very close to each other when compared for color and style. Both have sort of reddish icon with pictorial elements in them, while all other Office programs icons have very distinct colors and styles. Only when you look closer you can see that icons have different color (orangeish red vs. red) and different themes (slide vs. drawing), while having similar elements (like circles) in similar positions. And the fact that the names of the both programs start identically ("Microsoft Office P...") doesn't really help either. So when you are designing an icon for program or function, please make sure that every icon has a distinct visual message from other icons and are easily recognizable. And remember that when designing icons "less is more".