Here some tiny bits of what was is left of a post after i decided to shorten it and to link as little as possible...
It is difficult to not have noticed that there has been some quite radical change in the design surrounding some of the main Adobe applications. MetaDesign (and I guess it happened in the San Francisco Office?) has completely revamped some of the most familiar icons on the desktops of creative professionals around the world.
Gone is the Photoshop Eye, it is now a little parrot feather. Image Ready is now represented by a set of two yellowish and orange feathers. GoLive, is not a hand (of God?) holding a metallic sphere somewhere in space, but a star shaped window into a galaxy, far far away (okay, it is a star). The InDesign butterfly has a more graphic and more dynamic look and...
Venus is dead?
Adobe Illustrator has a new face, and the new face is not a face at all.
It is now a pink flower.
Clearly, Adobe has worked really hard to teach us over the years that there is a connection between "Illustrator" and Botticelli's Venus. Venus has been around since the beginning of Illustrator and up to version 10 one could take a peek at what the original startup screen of this first Post Script editor looked like. (by holding down the option key when selecting "About Illustrator" from the pulldown menue...)
The face of the Illustrator Venus was sent through more and more transformations and makeovers until it arrived at its somehow final transformation, in Illustrator 10. Venus looked a little tired by now, what would be the next transformation that would have to happen to her, in order to show that she is now even more up to date, that it was worth it buying the new version of the software?...
What happened, is the transformation of Venus, the Goddess of love and beauty into her own symbol, a rose. (Except that no rose was used in the icon, only in the outlines of the startup screen.) The flower used in the upper right corner of the startup screen is a yellow five petal shape... I will not write too much about all the symbols here, as we might want to keep at least something "under the rose"... hmm...
This made me smile... It is a bit of an internal joke...
