The New Adobe Photoshop Logo: It's A P

New Photoshop Logo

It only makes sense. After all, it’s been almost 10 months since the last rebranding. It’s about time. Right out of the blue (heh heh): it’s the new logo for the Photoshop “family” of applications.

Let’s put on our scrutinizing academic design goggles for a second and look at the significance of this design.

  • It’s a P. As in Photoshop.

    • The previous logo (which I assume was the icon-design for the CS3 package) was Ps. There’s definately some simplification going on here. P. Say that out loud. It’s something we all need (to) once in a while.

  • It’s got a hole in it.

    • Insert joke here.

  • It could be a single quotation mark.

    • Meaning “we started the sentence, you finish it”?

  • It’s a speech bubble!

    • Cue “hello Adobe, Apple iChat called, they want their logo back” joke. Also these.

  • If you tilt your head sideways to the left, it’s a silhuette of a man yelling out loud.

    • I can hear it now: “FUCK! IT CRASHED!”

  • It’s glassy and in 3D.

Meaning “this was made with Photoshop filters”. Where’s the lensflare?

More details on the logo on John Nacks blog. Your interpretations?

Apollo Becomes AIR

Adobe’s new web application framework previously code-named Apollo got a few neat things over the weekend. First of all, it’s name is now AIR: Adobe Integrated Runtime. More interestingly, the video is now hardware accelerated. Poof. The latter is definitely a step in the right direction. But why not full hardware acceleration for all flash content?

Showdown: Adobe vs. Microsoft

Adobe has started shipping their Creative Suite 3 including a new Adobe Media Player. Incidentally, Microsoft has also just launched their competitor, Microsoft Silverlight (previously known as Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere, or WPF/E).

The competition is direct; Adobe now has a web media player solution (video on demand, trailers, there are plenty of reasons to have a strong offering here) and Apollo, a crossplatform runtime that allows one to create web-apps; applications that work like regular appplications, but are/can be deeply integrated with the web (RIAs). In the other corner, we have Silverlight which claims to do exactly the same. In various commentary we’re told that whichever platform wins, both companies win. Even so, there’s nothing like a good cagematch and some healthy competition. Round one: Fight!

Adobe CS3 Boxing Leaked [Update]

[zenphoto src="adobe-cs3-boxes.jpg"]

Since we were shown the new Adobe CS3 icon set a while back, I’ve been, well, interested in how the new Adobe CS3 designs turned out. While they were set to launch tomorrow, March 27th, a canadian Amazon retailer has leaked promo images early.

First of all, I think the packaging is lovely. The color coding of the icons has been continued in to the packaging, with Macromedia programs Flash and Dreamweaver getting their usual red and green colors. Adobe’s own programs, which didn’t previously have specific color identities, have been given them; the royal blue one going to the flagship Photoshop. The larger bundle packs are now “color rainbows” based on what individual apps they contain; the “master” pack containing all colors.

All apps have been renamed CS3, as expected. For better or for worse, this ends a painful line of naming for Flash, at least; Flash 6 was Flash MX, Flash 7 was MX 2004 and Flash 8 was, well, 8. So Flash 9 is Flash CS3, and presumably Flash 10 will be CS4.

While we were given hints when the icons were shown, the packaging pretty much confirms it (even if only part of the packaging has leaked). Fireworks is being kept and there’s still_ no sign of ImageReady (good riddance). GoLive seems nowhere to be found, even though the icon set had a GoLive icon. On the other hand, there was a Freehand icon, yet we’re not shown a Freehand box. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s part of the “Master” collection, alongside Illustrator. Personally, I’d only need one, but I wouldn’t want to choose.

Update: The official launch webcast is tonight, 3.30 PM EST. It seems, however, that the Adobe homepage is already updated with the new product lines. What’s up with the Jester?

Thoughts on Crossplatform, Offline Web-Apps & Apollo

Adobe just demo’ed Apollo.

To my understanding, Apollo is a platform that is available on major operating systems, which allow web-apps to work as “real applications”. I understand this is similar to the “offline apps” feature that is being worked into Firefox 3. From Adobe Labs:

Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.

In laymans terms, it’s the web without the browser.

This is interesting for a number of reasons. In the most recent years we’ve seen the rise of such web-apps as Google Docs (spreadsheet & word processor), various sticky note/todo-list services and a myriad of other more or less useful services. Personally, I’ve recently switched to using Gmail as my only email client.

Writing / re-writing these services to take advantage of a runtime such as Apollo would give a number of benefits; each app would/could be a standalone “application” instead of requiring a browser. Each app would work offline, simply queuing whatever actions were taken to then synchronize them when going online. Finally, they’d get the ability to read/write local files, which could be used for a number of things. It could be a major push for web-apps, one that would finally cross the boundary problems of being web-only. I think it’s the next big thing for the web.

I, for one, would love to have a quickly launched, offline-ready Google Calendar app handy instead of being limited by connectivity and a browser. You?

Adobe CS3 Icons

cs3_icons.jpg

Adobe has released a color wheel showing the new Adobe CS3 icons. But wait, a color wheel? Yep. As it turns out, the new brand includes icons that are simply colored squares with periodic-table-of-the-elements like names; Ai for Illustrator, Ps for Photoshop, Fl for Flash.

Sure, I recognize a … ahem … whole palette of applications now they bought Macromedia. I get that by naming their icons similarly to the base elements, they communicate “base necessities” for graphic designers. Even so, this seems a bit over-designed to me. Fortunately, I don’t care much, unlike Ms. Pieters & Mr. Santa Maria.

On a sidenote, one could assume apps with icons means apps that live on in the post-Macromedia-merger period. Worthy of notice: Fireworks remains, Freehand remains, GoLive remains. ImageReady, on the other hand, seems nowhere to be found. There’s a named Flickr upload if you need more details. Dave Shea has more.