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My icons have been (lightly) criticized as "too 1998-ish":

http://www.sellmycalls.com/pics/98ish-icons.png
From left to right: refresh; auto/manual refresh toggle; filters; favorites; alerts.

To what was the critique aimed at? What the critic meant with "too 1998-ish"? Can someone show me examples of icons that are considered fashionable these days?

Thanks so much!

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3 Answers 3

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I think it would be good to browse through some popular icon sets to become familiar with the visual vocabulary that icon set designers use. Look at the Silk icon set I'm sure you'll recognize many in there.

But, essentially I would say that the reason your icons don't look up-to-date is because they really lack refinement and craft, something commonly missing from early era web design.

Anti-alias all your shapes (or none of them), proportion the images similarly, think carefully about communicating the concept behind the action more clearly. And choose a color scheme that is complementary to your surrounding UI.

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    +1 for the anti-alias recommendation. That stood out to me too...
    – Farray
    Commented May 26, 2011 at 21:10
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A few thoughts...

  • The icons look flat — there's no effort at a 3D effect, shadows, gradients, texture, etc.
  • The colors are very bright and primary.
  • All lowercase for auto. I think if it were all caps or small caps that would somehow seem fresher.
  • I'm amused by the lime-green HAL for "alerts" rather than something with an exclamation point...

If you want fashionable, try here.

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it seems that your still working with window 98 pattern....

enter image description here

enter image description here enter image description here windows Xp

You can see the difference which one you will like the most?? the same thing is happening with your client he also want which looks good as i like the xp thing.

in 90's we guys wasn't aware of vector,things worked with pixel only,you can see the changes in games later on we had pixel arts in game but as time passes away everyone start caring about vectors the smoothness,actually your working with pixel icons and your client want to see vectors/glossy eye catching and soothing icons

There are some very good articles on

You can download some free icon PSD form this site

Modern Icons web Mantra

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