by troupo | 2025-12-09 22:38:34+00:00
> I even described these types of combinations myself.

Not exactly. Re-read what I wrote

> When I look at your first link, I just see a ton of icons that look like variations on a grid.

1. It was just an example, out of potentially thousands of possible variations. And I described a much simpler one

2. You're complaining about "variations of a grid" and at the same time praise how Google uses literally the same icon for completely different actions

> I think you're missing the purpose of menu item icons. They are not too distinguish every single item. That's what the text is for.

So why does Google use an icon for every single item? It's enough to have just a single icon on the first item in the group, the rest will naturally be associated with it.

> They are to help identify either the basic type of verb or the basic type of noun or adjective at a glance. Without having to think about it... even when multiple many items share the same icon if they perform the same action.

Ah yes, you don't have to think about checks notes that "Create filter" and "Apply filter from cell value" are actually completely different actions with completely different modes of operation, that's why they get a single generic filter icon.

> At a glance, you can see that all of the plus icons mean insert something and all of the trashcan icons mean to delete something, and then you look at the text to see what is being inserted or deleted.

Oh, "read text between identical icons and hope you didn't misread the action you needed" is good, but "read text between similar icons if they are not distinct enough" is bad. Got you

> Trying to cram all of that information into a tiny icon

So don't cram it. I literally described the most minimal icons that don't cram much info.

Also, there's literally no "crammin of info" in, say, adding a plus sign to a filter icon to designate "create" and to differentiate it from "apply".

Just a few examples of minimal icons. They are from different packs, so their styles and approaches will be different, these are just to illustrate the idea. Also, as you said, not every menu item needs an icon:

- "insert column": https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/edit-tool_7601880?related... and https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/edit-tool_7601881?related...

- "insert row": https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/row_7043663?related_id=70...

- delete can follow the same principle

- create filter can use the same pattern as this remove filter icon: https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/clear-filter_6134093?rela...

etc. etc.

Google "designers" literally took a generic icon set, searched for terms "insert", "delete", "filter" and chose the first ones that came up in search. That's it. That's the "hard decision" they had to make.

Which is ironic given that they went out of their way to create varied distinct icons for the top-level menu, but not for the context menu. Or that Google Docs (not Sheets) manages to do all that, and use slightly different icons than Sheets (e.g. for Paste Without Formatting)

> Design is full of these kinds of trade-offs.

What Google shows is not a trade-off. It's either incompetence or non-caring, and I don't know which is worse.