[seba_dos1]

The only problem I have with Kate these days is... its icon. It's been there for years now, and yet my mind still just stops for a noticeable bunch of milliseconds whenever it has to recognize it. For some reason it looks like it represents some brand's useless mobile app rather than a proper utility and my mind somehow refuses to associate it with Kate.

[cullmann]

Before we had that, we had a icon that just looked like a text file mime type with zero recognizably.

Even if you used it for a week, you would not be able to know which application is running just looking at the icon. Could be any editor or some word processor.

With the current one, it is clear. And yes, I think that makes sense, that is a brand.

And it is what most other applications do, too. I doubt my mother has any idea what e.g. the Chromium icon means, but once seen a few times, it is clearly recognizable.

[seba_dos1]

All I can see at first glance is a blue circle with some not very well-defined shape on it and generic mobile-style shadow. When I zoom it up, I can appreciate that it's a somewhat abstract rendition of the cyber woodpecker, but after all this time (and I'm talking years, not a week) I'm still not seeing it at first glance when the icon is small. It's just a blue circle that, unlike Chromium's icon with its distinct dot in the middle, gets lost among other circles.

I think the issue I have with it isn't with the "logo" shape itself, but rather with how it's embedded into and composed within an icon. I think it could work well on something else than a plain circle. Maybe even just improving the shadow and adjusting color shades to make it more contrast-y could already help.

[Zambyte]

Why not change it?