Why did photorealistic icons never take off?

Icons, logos & logomarks, flags, typographic glyphs and other such symbols functionally are meant to be generalized, legible, maximally quick and easy to recognize forms at any point, NOT detailed photograph or render of something scaled down to blurry blob of 32 pixels on or when viewed from distance (on large screen, in print etc.). It's not an art of how much shit you can cram in, but just the opposite, while staying distinctive from other symbols, preferably even when presented in single color (like black on white with no shades in between).

come on ppl. can you really see yourself using computers that look like this?

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Your opinion is retarded and so are you. Try using the fucking whicons icon pack on android. It's unusable because you can't figure out what's what. More details is always better because it's much easier for people to find what they're looking for, especially in peripheral view.

too many details that look like an unrecognizable smudge on anything smaller than 128x128

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would you have 32x32 icons on a 4K screen tho?

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4k doesn't mean I have to waste the entire screen with huge bullshit
icons are for quick identification of function, and generally you only need a simple shape and colour for that
flatshit used to be really great, but then the retarded UI designers eliminated colour altogether and fucked everything up
see and for the monochrome mess that takes several seconds to identify, especially the different variants of the same basic icon

> more detail easier to see with peripheral vision
> basic, abstracted shape harder to identify

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if this is the shitricer theme you're talking about, they are bad icons. most of those system icons are circular or nearly square shapes with maybe 2 or 3 other distinctive icons. of course you won't see shit. the fundamental shape, independent from whatever color, gradient and drop shadow cake, is the most important aspect of a symbol, then you can cake it up if that's necessary.

most of the 'good' icons presented in this thread are like 5 square cm large renders, i wonder why. the old windows 9x icons are good because they had limited high-contrast pallete and distincitive shapes on small sizes.

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This is probably the time where icons were most visually appealing. Takes time and effort to design something like this.
Icons such as these disgust me in any way possible. They require next-to-zero skill to make and are marketed under the guise of "functionality first" and they have no anesthetic to them. Fucking disgusting.

>they have no anesthetic to them

Why would you want to be numbed by your icons?

>They require next-to-zero skill to make and are marketed under the guise of "functionality first" and they have no anesthetic to them.

They are not even functionally good icons for one-color visual style the author is going for. Monochrome (like with type design) has to be distinctive in appearance (which takes work and consideration). These aren't.

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get a load of captain small brains over here, still having to look at what the icon looks like and not just remembering its position on screen

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but it can be!

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not bad for 16 colors
you gotta start somewhere, right?

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>position changes
>you're fucked
Kys

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this wasn't a bad idea, but they should have taken it further than just putting up flat boards with shadows

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He's right, you're wrong.

OS X up to 10.9 still kept skeumorphism for the most part, only adding a few iOS-ish icons for a few new apps. Old OS X is easily the most beautiful OS ever made.

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nah, it's a retarded idea
the depth means you have to scale everything and you are going to find yourself running out of pixels very quickly
maybe in 15 years when everyone has an 8k screen, and it can't be made by Microsoft because they fuck up everything they touch

when things go holographic and monitors are dead, I'd like something a little more 3-D

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for example i think this would be the wrong way to implement it, because you're just doing a holographic monitor and not really taking advantage of the projection property of holograms

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No, retard.

but I can see how it can become a problem when you have lots of documents to work with. how do you put them away? stack'em? move them in the background?
how do you implement minimize?

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Too much detail, doesn't work at low resolutions

I really miss the old OS X and the old OS X theming scene.

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Flat/material is lowest point in history for icon design.

Back in the days every icon was small work of art, nowadays they all look like autistic toddlers crayon scribbles.

Anyone with an ounce of anally-retentive attention to detail can make flat designs. But if you asked me to make a skeuomorphic icon I wouldn't know where to start. We need to inject more elitism into the design industry