Posted: Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 7:59 pm. Filed in Uncategorized.
Vote for the new WordPress icons
Update: Voting has closed, and the winners will be announced soon.
If you watched the WordPress 2.7 trailer or checked out the screenshots that were posted a couple of weeks ago, you probably noticed the use of icons in the new left-hand navigation. A handful of designers have submitted icon sets in a competition to choose the new icons. Read all about it on the development blog, then cast your vote! The winning set will be announced in a couple of days, so hurry… in order to get the new icons finished and included in time, we’re only keeping the survey open for 48 hours. This is your chance to weigh in on the future design of WordPress, so we hope you’ll take advantage of it.
Go to WordPress 2.7: Project Icon Voting has now closed.
A note about comments: In the interest of making comments on this post more valuable, we will only be approving comments that contribute to a discussion about the icons, the voting process, the redesign, etc. We will not approve comments that ask support questions (contact support instead, please), promote URLs in the comment text, or just say “Cool!” or “Awesome!” If you want the link love, please make a substantive contribution to the discussion. Thanks!
November 13th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Yeah
Go to WordPress 2.7
November 13th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
We really appreciate your work! It’s not just because of the results you get: the process itself is remarkable.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
this looks great! i will be voting!!! you guys rock!
November 13th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
I didn’t mention this in the survey, because it wasn’t directly related to the icons.
In the review of VS, you said:
I don’t think appearance is the place for abstract settings. If you look at the Appearance settings in Mac OS X you see checkboxes, radios and popups. This is the type of data Appearance settings should be confined to (sliders are also acceptable). Abstract settings like the organisation of your dashboard should be done elsewhere. For example, you could rearrange your dashboard views by dragging the title bars, like in iGoogle. You could add or remove views by clicking a “Customise…” button. This might add a sidebar on the right where you can add or remove content, and options to change settings and rearrange views.
It may be too late for such a change, but you can still add a separate pane for rearranging. Please?
November 13th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Hi KA. I think you may have misunderstood the meaning of the Appearance section. It’s not about settings or rearranging your Dashboard, it’s where you choose your theme and widgets (renamed from Design based on previous surveys, because people don’t think of Widgets as being a design element given the functional aspect). The “blocks of your web site” refers to your actual live blog, not the administration tool. The Settings section is still where blog settings will be located.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I love the chameleon for appearance since that is one great aspect of publishing on a blog! Although the eye was a strong runner up! And the heart links is very cool too. Can’t wait to see the final!!
Thanks for including our feedback and ideas! It took longer than I expected to take the survey but well worthwhile!
November 13th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Ah, thanks. That makes much more sense.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Is it free?
November 14th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
I’m not sure what your question is referring to, but taking the survey is free and version 2.7 will be free when it is released. Hope this helps.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
They’re all amateurish. But VS is the best. But none at all is best.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
While I’m glad you want to participate in the discussion, please remember that these volunteer designers are professionals, and deserve our respect and thanks for their work. I’m approving your comment, but would like to point out that it would be helpful if you could express such opinions in a slightly more polite fashion in the future. Thanks.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
They look great – can’t wait for 2.7 – thanks for all your hard work on the project!
November 13th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Hi, I think, that the screenshot from your blog showing the dashboard with perfect icons and I liked them very much. Here is a link for the screenshot from your blog: http://wpdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/newpost.png
November 14th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
The Crystal Project icons that are in the screenshot are very nice, but not all the metaphors quite match up, and we wanted something custom to go with our new look. Hopefully you’ll like the winning icons just as much!
November 14th, 2008 at 2:45 am
OSD is good and clean .. but I didn’t like the dashboard icons I think they are all confused. Maybe I don’t know what a dashboard really means. It could be an artist board!? or a desk!? …
I appreciate your post.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Is there a reason why all icon nominations are in black and white?
November 14th, 2008 at 4:18 am
Yes. All designers were asked to complete their icon sets in grayscale, so that a) judges/voters could focus on the shapes and metaphors rather than being distracted by color, and b) to reduce the amount of work each contestant would be doing (for free). The winning designer will produce a second set of icons in color for the active/hover states.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:51 am
just voted for GB1! it’s perfect for me
November 14th, 2008 at 7:22 am
I was glad to be able to vote on the icons but found it difficult to compare them properly because only one type showed up on the screen at once. I hope the ordering of their appearance doesn’t skew the results one way or another.
Thanks for offering us the chance to vote.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Hi Ian. We’ve actually been changing the order in which the icon sets are presented, so that over the course of the two days of voting, each entry will have changed position and order multiple times to reduce bias based on order of presentation.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:16 am
I always apreciate your artwork
November 14th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Looking good. Can’t wait. Really appreciate the great work.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I especially loved the links icon in shape of an heart and that in the shape of two concatenated rings. Lovely.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Having to scroll between the icons and Q.2 of the survey is too annoying. My lappy does not have huge res.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Sorry you found it frustrating! We thought it was important to display the menu icons at full size to give the voters the most realistic images and do the designers’ work justice. I feel your pain: I’m on a 13″ MacBook Air, and I had to do plenty of scrolling myself when composing the survey! In these situations, I tend to use the page down function instead of actual scrolling, which I find a lot less aggravating.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I like many icon sets. Why not to create something like “Icon theme” that could be changed as a whole blog “Theme”?
Another idea could be to have something like a list of icons for particular menu item (the same way operating system gives you a choice of sounds for particular event). This way we will see explosion of “icon themes”. This could serve the case when some people associate wrench icon with a Settings menu and other associate it with a “Tools” menu. Hopefully, it will not require a lot of changes to support this kind of flexibility.
Personally, I would like to see colored icons, not the grey ones just for sake of maximum color compatibility. If icons a in PNG format then they can be transparent to improve the “blending with a color scheme”.
This is just the beginning. Can’t wait to see it alive!
November 14th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Given the scope of the redesign, it’s important that we have one consistent set of icon metaphors, to reduce confusion. This will especially be important if people have support requests and make mention of the navigation they used to perform some task. If an icon image could be associated with multiple menu items, the support staff would have no way of knowing what the user really did, or how to help them.
As has been previously mentioned in these comments, the grayscale icons will be supplemented by color icons once we choose a winner. It would have been asking too much of our volunteers to have them create all the icon states within a week for so many icons.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Yeah
I’m voting for these 
November 14th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
the questionary it’s just too long, split it in two next time or more, i can’t pass 30 minute to ask on some icons for a blog.
5 minutes it’s acceptable, more it’s a work, and I want credit for that.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I don’t think it took most people 30 minutes to fill out the survey, but if it did, well, I think it’s worth it to the people that really want to have a say in the design of the next version of the WordPress administrative interface that they will be using every day. We tried to make it very clear that only 7 questions were mandatory, so that if anyone wanted to vote for their favorite icons without getting into granular details about specific images they wouldn’t have to spend any more time than necessary, so I’m sorry if you felt participating was a burden.
As for getting credit for more than 5 minutes of “work,” I’m not sure I understand your point, since voting is entirely optional and voluntary.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I really appreciate the idea of voting for this redesign. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of the upcoming changes. I am very excited for the new improvements.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
just voted for GB1! it’s perfect for me
November 14th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
I voted VS, the style is just cleaner to me than the others. I did love the “hearts” link and the eye for the appearance, very easy to see and understand. All the designers really did a wonderful job!
November 14th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
We agree that all the designers did amazing work under such a short deadline. When we’ve chosen the winning designer, we’ll take into account specific icon forms that received high votes, and try to bring together all the best ideas into our final set.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Well personally, they’re a little too grey. Maybe a little bit of colour should do.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
If you had read the response to an earlier comment, you’d have seen that all the designers were asked specifically to present their icon sets in gray scale so the judges and community could focus on form and metaphor without distraction. The winning designer will prepare color versions for launch.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
i voted for BD.. it’s look so smart
November 14th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
How is the person chosen? Do the judges ranking impact the decision?
November 14th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
The final decision will rest with the judges, but they will be highly influenced by the community vote. When the survey has closed, we’ll release the results, so the process will be transparent.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I am a long time user and recently became a full time blogger; leaving behind my corporate life. And this post is one of the reasons why I choose WP to be my platform of choice. I really appreciate the fact the the WP team is open to hearing from the community and works to make things as efficient as possible for the users.
We all know that it is not possible to please everyone, but listening to and working with your community makes a big difference.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Glad you approve, and welcome to WordPress!
November 14th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
I voted on the icons, and they look good. Some of the themes/icons are hard to choose between. I enjoyed the survey at the end where we could give our input as to which metaphor is best for a particular application.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Awesome job! Wonder who are the designers, who are from all over the world? GB sets are great, but I voted for VS.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:50 am
We’ll identify all the designers when we release the results of the voting. We didn’t want to bias anyone’s vote based on name or nationality.
November 15th, 2008 at 2:48 am
BD,BD,BD,BD,BD
November 15th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Jane, I did the survey. My one concern is that the new dashboard is going to be difficult for those of us in low-bandwidth situations (I spend most of my time in Mozambique). The flash media uploader for example is completely impossible where we live.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Overall, the new administration panel (the Dashboard refers to one specific screen, the admin panel refers to whole back-end administration tool) will be better for low bandwidth, because the new expandable menu system means you won’t need to load new pages just to click on another submenu item. We’ve found that most functions in 2.7 now require 2-3 fewer page loads.
The Flash media uploader has not been changed for 2.7, but media management will be completely redone for 2.8 (due February 2009). I’d recommend using the browser uploader instead of the Flash one, given your bandwidth restrictions.
November 15th, 2008 at 3:07 am
Hi Jane, thanks for the answer. But, let’me know how to get this, because I’ve got a “normal” wordpress and I’ve seen a lot of texts from you about releases of wordpress. How can I get this exactly? Do I must to do some upgrade on my own blog? How can I use these features?
Best Regards!
November 15th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
People on wordpress.com don’t have to do anything to get the new releases. The magic employees of Automattic will take of upgrading your blog. 2.7 should be coming out toward the end of November, and we will announce it in advance on this blog so you have some warning.
November 15th, 2008 at 6:25 am
I’m really tired of seeing the same thing. Couldn’t we put up ads where wordpressnews is?
November 15th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Looks good. I’ve already voted and now I’m just looking forward to 2.7 – Thanks
November 15th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I voted for VS nice and clean! XD
November 15th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
You’d think a graphic designer would know what to choose..OMG OMG OMG.
will definitely vote…
November 15th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I would think it would be most important to choose the best executed design rather than the metaphors, since it seems the metaphors will be directed from the responses that are gathered from the survey. The most technically skilled designer would seem to be the best choice.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Whew. I Voted GB2 (runner up GB2 or VS). I see those 6 different appearance, and it looks great too. *two thumbs up.
November 15th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I voted for VS nice and clean
November 16th, 2008 at 4:34 am
Since the voting is down I can’t see them… what did they look like?
November 16th, 2008 at 4:47 am
We’ll be posting the winners tomorrow, including images of the icons.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Cool, i ll wait the changes
November 16th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I have a great deal of good things to say about 2.7. It is a major improvement.
I only wish I had known about the competition and could have entered.
It didn’t stop me from coming up with a set.
I guess it will live with my blog and die with my blog.
However, there is too much good in 2.7 to cry over spilled milk.
November 16th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
i can’t wait wp 2.7 it would be more powerfull and more enhancement
November 16th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I voted VS because some of the people love “VS’.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:31 am
I’m using WordPress 2.7 on my blog right now, and I was thinking: have you ever considered a option inside Settings where people can pick the icon set they like, or even upload their own? It would greatly improve the design since a lot of people have contributers on their blog and they want the icons to be the way they want it.
Anyway, WordPress 2.7 is awesome! I don’t think I’ve helped beta-test and submit bugs so much in all the previous releases…
November 17th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
It took me a bit to begin to see the subtle differences among the sets. All in all, I enjoyed the experience. Most, however, I appreciate the fact that you actively seek input from us.
November 17th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
not bad… got in my vote just in time! although i’m shamefully new to wordpress right now, i’m extremely glad that i joined it, much in part because of this update that is soon coming!
November 18th, 2008 at 1:38 am
I missed it! Too bad for me!
November 18th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
In the future, a “general comments” box at the end of the survey would have been helpful. May be too late now, but I was going to suggest looking at the possibility of making “community” minded sections have “double” icons like 2 comment bubbles, or the 2 user icons stacked one in front of the other like in BD and VS. I would classify the following as “community” specific: Links, Comments, Users. All other icons would be a single image in this system.
Overall, great work by all the artists!
November 18th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
oh,I missed voting.
November 19th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Darn! I missed it, too. Looks like there is no link to what we missed.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
ah, qué grande
November 21st, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I really need to check my dashboard more often, I totally missed this whole thing!
November 21st, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Jane Wells could u please put in an newletter widget in which readers could type email addresses and get mailed every time there is an update. Also could u put that for all of us as well so that our readers can also stay in touch? please
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Check out this post from the FAQ on email updates.
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Don’t know what all the fuss is about, must of missed it.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
I too especially loved the links icon in shape of an heart and that in the shape of two concatenated rings. Lovely.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:26 am
I can’t wait !!! awesome
November 24th, 2008 at 3:29 am
Awtz I missed voting
November 24th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Hi, I like this wordpress and really like this site for me.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Crap, I really wanted to vote… saw it yesterday while posting then couldn’t find it when I had a chance to get to it… Oh, well. I’m sure “we” picked a good one.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:31 am
Dang, I missed it too, oh well …
November 26th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
..Oh..That is,a good icons from wordpress..
Although..I am a new user,but i loved this changed..
November 26th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Do you have to download the new wordpress?
November 28th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Im so happy with, what u done for us.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
November 28th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
I think “Verena Segert” have the best icons, top design!
Congratulations for this work!!!
November 29th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Oh NO . I just missed something. CONGRATULATIONS
November 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
not bad at all
November 30th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
As a suggestion, although voting is closed, it would be good to leave the options here so that people who haven’t seen them can see them. I would have loved to look at the potentials.
November 30th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
in the wordpress.com there is a notice about a vote… but the vote is no more active.
November 30th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I wanted to vote ,but I missed it, but I thought that the icon should be a antique type writer with a black and white background.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:32 am
I missed it :[
I wish i could’ve voted. Ugh.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
If voting has closed, take the alert down to “vote on new icons”…hello!
December 1st, 2008 at 10:50 pm
awww i missed it. how could i??? :{
It must`ve been cool.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:01 am
i missed the vote too?? ahhh…maybe next time then:D
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 am
woo!
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 pm
woo hoo!! i won!! oh, sorry. guess not.
December 4th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Really missed the comments… Darn!