What do you think of the proposed new Google icons for Android?

Kris Carlon 2014-04-14T10:00:01Z6 hours ago

Kris Carlon

Putting down roots in Berlin after six years of traveling is a major step for Kris Carlon, who has spent more time living out of a tent lately than sitting at a desk. Kris comes to the AndroidPIT Editorial Team via a lengthy period spent writing on art and culture in Australia and other places he has lived. He joined the Android community while resurfacing in civilization back in 2010 and has never looked back, using technology to replace his actual presence in other people's lives ever since.

With a likely change in the Google icons for Android in the pipelines to better match what we currently have on the web-based version of our favorite Google products, the question arises: do we really need them if they represent yet another change in Android's design guidelines?

The new leaked Google app icons - do you prefer them or want them to stay the same? / © Android Police

The new icons have been picked up by Android Police and they do seem a little more stream-lined compared to their current Android form. But considering the Holo design style is still seeping into the billion apps in the Play Store with relatively slow uptake, is changing the guidelines for app icons – requiring even more changes from developers, no matter how simple – really a good idea? Sure, Google gets to set the standard, but suddenly everything else on your Android looks out of whack and everyone has to play catch up. Here's the current web and Android versions along with the new icons leaked to Android Police.

The new icons show a better resemblance to their web-based counterparts, but they're still not perfectly aligned with Google's design guidelines. / © Android Police

The guidelines set by Google for both web and Android are not even mirrored in their own icons. Giving the icons a refresh to actually match what Google itself lays down for others makes sense, but even with the proposed new icons in the image above we still don't have consistency across the board between the web and future Android icons (or the guidelines themselves in their current state). Is this just change for change's sake? Or is this part of a broader cleaning up of Google's properties and well overdue?

Source: Android Police

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