Comments on: New Thunderbird Icon: Iteration 2

By: beera

beera — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:36:08 +0000

fantastic icon with beautiful theme.

By: Mike A

Mike A — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:31:00 +0000

Love the red seal in #2.

By: Håkan W

Håkan W — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:20:06 +0000

I agree with others that the circular shape is not necessarily natural for the Thunderbird icon. I’m guessing it is circular to match the Firefox icon.

I think it could look more interesting icon if it was not squeezed into a circle, for examples by experimenting with the tail feather idea or even let rounded-off wings have some feathers peeking out.

By: Gijswijs

Gijswijs — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:13:58 +0000

Hi,

Really, really like the seal. It suddenly makes the “@” sign work. Although i advocated to drop the “@” sign entirely in the first iteration, I’ve switch sides now. Keep the seal! I agree though with earlier commenters that the wings could be a bit more bird-ish, and should attach different to the body.

By: CapitaineEcarlate

CapitaineEcarlate — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:14:42 +0000

This is amazing! I love the new feathers and the new envelope. The idea of a tail looks good to me too.
My concern is about the seal: wax seals don’t really represent modernity and high-tech to me. So, though the visual effect is good, the message is maybe not so clear, or not so good…
Finally, I agree that it is not the time yet to discuss about a 16×16 version. But I shall say that I did notice the difference on the 16×16 icon of Firefox, and though it is very small, I believe this is also the one that people will see the most (window corner, quick launch…).

By: SLA80

SLA80 — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:37:22 +0000

Hello again,
I have created a drawing, to explain
what’s wrong with Thunderbird wings, and how to fix it:
http://sla80.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/natural-bird-wings.png

By: James John Malcolm

James John Malcolm — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:50:55 +0000

I think there can be more done with the dark-blue to light-blue in the wings.

The seal is really quite nifty – it makes the @ work conceptually. Dunnu if it should stay in though.

Also, the beak’s shadow hides the edge of the envelope-V.

@Greg:
Thunderbird farts feathers from its ass?

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:18:45 +0000

Looks amazing!! Not that there is anything that requires improving but what about just a small fraction of the bird’s tail feathers peeking out. …something like this perhaps??… http://robertwalder.net/thunderbird.png

By: Ken Saunders

Ken Saunders — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:32:55 +0000

Sweetness!
It’s really cool to see a good thing made to be great and (imo) that’s what has happened here.

Now I certainly don’t wish any ill will at all towards Anthony, but if for some reason his CS3 (or whatever he’s using) were to suddenly disappear along with his Thunderbird logo templates and source files, then I suppose that this would just have to be the final version then wouldn’t it. :)

Of course I’m more realistic than that and understand that there will more than likely be further tweaks, I just hope that they do not dramatically deviate from what he has here.

To Alex F, I honestly never had anything against you personally that caused me to leave 12 paragraph long comments on each and every iteration of the Firefox logo, and I don’t have any less passion for the Thunderbird logo, I just think that Anthony has nailed this earlier than the Fx one. Perhaps it’s because it isn’t as much of a departure from the original one as the Fx logo was, or maybe it’s because Anthony is on fire, or it could be the Baileys in my iced coffee speaking, I’m not sure, but I love what I see here.

PLEASE- Let’s skip the “it looks like crap at 16px” conversation this time around. No one is going to see a significant difference at that size to begin with, and no one will uninstall Thunderbird if they don’t like the logo at that size either which by the way is smaller than a pea.

By: SLA80

SLA80 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:03:25 +0000

Improvement suggestion:
Those wings looks too much like Firefox tails. For bird wings this is too unnatural. Because in real life, bird wings looks much more complicated, interesting and detailed. It was better in the original Thunderbird icon. You are making more detailed logo, right? Then DO NOT simplify wings’ level of details!
Bird wing consists of many different feather types. Near the body feathers are SHORTER, and longer are only on the endings.
Look at original icon, and at those perfect illustrations:
http://images.google.com/images?q=bird+wing

By: SLA80

SLA80 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:40:31 +0000

BINGO!!!
Anthony, you are genius! I gonna advocate your “seal” idea now:
With a seal, this logo got some kind of “center” spot, and it eliminated the “dangerous” sharp tip on the envelope.
And its red color looks very LOVELY (remember, “lovely” is very good association for postal letters!)
Sealed letter looks very “special”, it is a “secret”, it is interesting, and it is attracting!
Also, on small resolutions, this seal will turn into a red spot (or red dot) – it is OK!
I know, the seal will be removed in i3, but then we could ask you to bring it back in i4 :))
About other overall improvements:
Feathers on upper part of wings got shine (like it was in original icon), this is good. Warm envelope and non-violet blurred shadow – it makes this icon almost perfectly finished. There could be much less iterations to get the final version, than it was with Firefox :)

By: Dominic Spitaler

Dominic Spitaler — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:44:21 +0000

I really like the seal, I’d definitely keep it, it adds some nice color to the icon.

In my opinion the feathers are still missing a lot of details (finer gradients, subtle, small feathers).

The head and the texture of the envelope is gorgeous.

Maybe add some feathers that extend over this perfect circle form, it’s just to perfect.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:43:05 +0000

Looking at iterations 1 and 2 I’m impressed by the additional detail in the shadows and the feathers with their highlight strokes.

By: Ludovic

Ludovic — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:48:01 +0000

I love the red seal ….

By: cantalou

cantalou — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:38:56 +0000

Great improvement with the red seal
I still think that the envelop is not contrasted enough.
Could it be orange or more yellow based on Firefox color swatch?

But congratulation already big improvement between first and second iteration

By: Jaap

Jaap — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:51:34 +0000

Maybe the bird’s beak, breast or Mohawk could gain a little color?

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:31:19 +0000

The new version looks great, much better than the old one.

My problem with the Thunderbird logo still is, that the bird, in this circular shape, looks pretty ugly. Could you try to work with a more “bird-like” bird and probably a smaller envelope instead (so that there’s more space for the bird)?

By: Sudhir

Sudhir — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:28:43 +0000

The red seal is a big improvement. It looks so much better already! However the feathers still don’t look natural. Probably the shading could be altered to make the endings more subtle.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:20:30 +0000

BIG improvement!

I’d still love to see some extra color in there somewhere… especially with a word as powerful as “thunderbird.” The shadow looks great too – nice adjustment.

As someone else mentioned, possibly blend the wings back into the body more naturally. Wings don’t just end like that – and definitely not the feathers on those wings.