Share via

Icon Explosion

  • Article

This question was posed to me in a comment earlier this week: how many icons does Office contain?

The answer: it depends on how you're counting.

The most common icon size in Office is 16 pixels high by 16 pixels wide, but we also have 32x32 and a limited set of 24x24 icons in use as well. Additionally, we have a number of graphics used to render the UI which are not icons at all but are either bitmaps (the old way) or PNG files (the new way) which end up compressed into the Office DLLs.

Within each icon, we usually have multiple color depths: 32-bit including alpha channel for the icons you see in the Ribbon, sometimes 256-color versions as well, and definitely 16-color versions for icons that have been around for a while. We also have certain black-and-white variants of icons for use in high contrast mode.

So back to the original question: how many?

The visual nature of the Ribbon, in which every feature has an icon, has meant creating a lot of new icons.

If you just count 16x16 icons (where one icon = one unique shape rendered into any number of color depths within a single .ico file), we have well over 3000.

If you counted each color variant as a separate icon, that number would be much higher.

We're edging ever closer to 1000 32x32 icons for use in the Ribbon as the days go on...

Suffice it to say, there are a lot of pixels being pushed around.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    This is a nice things. Im working with the rbbon via vsto3 and the image in pgn is a wonderful ideas !!!

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    It would be really cool to see all those 16x16 icons in one big image, 60 by 50 icons! (How about making a photo mosaic of the office logo using the icons.)

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    Sjoerd, cool idea.  Wouldn't be useful, but it would be fun.  :)

    Though I still have trouble with icons - I prefer words for all but the most frequently used commands.  Maybe that's because I do too many things in too many different pieces of software....

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    And these icons are NOT vector graphics right?

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    ugh! that's ALOT! Icons take so long to make. Each have to tell a message and be easily identifiable from all the others. ...and you got 3000!

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    So do all of the icons communicate something?  In the context of usability how many icons can a user identify globally within an application?

    Oh, and kudos to the team who can come up with that many icons!

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    How about giving away these icons for users of VS2k5 or something? :). It'll be a great resource for users developing apps in .NET to use the same icons that are used in MSs flagship apps. Will probably never happen but just a thought......

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    Given that icons are (obviously) visual metaphors, are there times when you have to change icons between international versions because the metaphors don't work? i would think this especially true when doing non-western internationalization.

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2006
    There is still some trouble with icons. But will try to count them as told by u. May be it will work that way.

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2006
    No, Mac OS X icons are NOT vector graphics.  They just happen to be very large (128x128), so they appear to scale very well.  For more info see

    http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/macos-x-gui/macos-x-gui-6.html

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2006
    Which company is creating your icons? Iconfactory or someone else?

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2006
    Customization is always a good thing, especially for the frequently used ICONs

  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2006
    Ever wondered how many icons Microsoft is using for office? Well see Jensen Harris' blog on the Office 2007 UI for the answer:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/12/596112.aspx

    First of all we are still strugeling with TImagelist with

  • Anonymous
    May 24, 2006
    Could you explain how you go from a feature to an icon? Do you just let the guys design whatever or is there lots of input from the developers?

  • Anonymous
    May 30, 2006
    The vector graphics issue is an interesting one.

    Where does Vista stand with respect to seperating  UI element size from display ppi?  Are there any MSDN blogs discussing those sorts of issues?

  • Anonymous
    June 20, 2006
    Persone los pioneros non rabata. Great...

  • Anonymous
    June 23, 2006
    Best of all people w can talk...

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2007
    PingBack from http://www.zuschlogin.com/?p=27

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    PingBack from http://mstechnews.info/2008/10/the-office-2007-ui-bible/