[happytoexplain]

Wow! The new icons have unacceptably small details, and I'm not sure how that's not obvious to even non-designers. And yet the author claims their set puts usability in front of beauty, as opposed to the originals? I don't usually write this negatively, but this really provoked an emotional reaction in me. Self-evidence is only one desirable quality of iconography, and it is not the most important one. Legibility is the most important one. If I can't read the details, or they easily wear off or fade, then it doesn't matter how self-describing they are. Sometimes you have to increase abstraction to increase legibility at the cost of increased learning. This is a common and accepted practice throughout the universe of symbology for excellent reasons.

Edit: Another advantage of high legibility is speed. Even if I have a tag where the new symbols are legible, I won't be interpreting them as quickly as the original symbols, under the precondition that I am already familiar with each set of symbols.

Edit: I think the reason this provoked me is that I have run into cases where this attitude toward design created bad real world experiences, so I immediately want to warn away from it as soon as I see it even in a hypothetical case.

[Twirrim]

Something that seems a bizarre change is the iron one, almost makes me wonder if this is someone that ever irons clothes. Going from dots to a thermometer?

1) Irons have respective dots on them. I can look at the clothes, look at the iron, and turn the temperature dial to the matching setting. I'm not playing guessing games of "where on the dial is 1/3rd?", there's a literal dot that matches the symbol.

2) The temperature symbols now go from easy to distinguish to confusing, especially when smaller and lighting not so great. Is it a 1/3 of the way through? 2/3rs? Counting dots is way, way easier and quicker.

[Aeolun]

> If I can't read the details, or they easily wear off or fade, then it doesn't matter how self-describing they are.

You can reverse this too. If I never understand what they mean, it doesn’t matter that I can still read them.

I mean, I agree there’s too many hard to read details, but the originals are absolutely impenetrable.

[chrstphrknwtn]

Sure, but if at some point you actually need to know what the symbols mean at least the symbols will still be discernible and will have something to look up.