The Hickensian

31.08.04 Bare Bones means Comic Sans

67 comments
Tagged with: design, logos

With the release of BBEdit 8.0, has come the most inexplicable new feature. The application icon has been updated with the most grotesque typography, looking like a Comic Sans derivative. For a serious, professional, mac-only application this is so inappropriate:

Old icon

I was never a fan of the previous logo, but this took the biscuit. So, to avoid looking having to look at this, I whipped up a quick replacement over lunch:

replacement icon

It’s by no means perfect, or intended as a serious replacement proposal to BareBones Software. It ‘is what it is’ – what I would prefer to look at instead. If you also happen to prefer it, you can download the icon from here. There are 2 options for changing the icon. Either ctrl-click BBEdit to ‘show package contents’, and replace the ‘BBEditApplication.icns’ file in the resources folder, or, copy and paste the folder icon in the get info window.

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No.1

∞ Phil said 1988 days ago:

Man, you must be telepathic. I just noted in my blog entry on BBEdit 8 that the logo was a bit naff, and perhaps they should get in touch with you regarding a re-design. Then I read your site and find you’ve already done it!

No.2

∞ brent said 1988 days ago:

Looks great! I already added it. Thanks for stepping up and helping our desktops out.

No.3

∞ Waylman said 1988 days ago:

Wow, I was just reading about this very problem at DxF and then I come here and find a solution. I go back to tell everyone over there what you did and you just beat me to it.

Oh, btw, it looks good. Keep up the good work.

No.4

∞ Brandon Pierce said 1988 days ago:

Amen to that. I’ll be using your icon as soon as I get home. I’m ready to petition Bare Bones to ship 8 with your icon!

No.5

∞ matsimpsk said 1988 days ago:

Bah! Comic Sans is, of course, the font choice of champions.

No.6

∞ Gary said 1988 days ago:

I whipped up a quick replacement over lunch

sigh Excuse me while I go and bang my head repeatedly off my desk…

You’re just showing off now…thank heavens ;) What did I accomplish for lunch? I didn’t drop too much on my keyboard…

No.7

∞ Gary said 1988 days ago:

I whipped up a quick replacement over lunch

Grumble…all I managed over lunch was to not drop too much on my keyboard…grumble..

Great work though

S’cuse me while I go bang my head off my desk…repeatedly ;)

No.8

∞ Dale Cruse said 1988 days ago:

I hope BareBones knows how lucky they are to have you just design an icon for them without compensation. They seriously need to consider adopting it – WITH compensation!

Here’s hoping you’ll do something with NewsFire next….

No.9

∞ Gary said 1988 days ago:

Whoops double comments…feel free to tidy up

No.10

∞ Shaun Inman said 1988 days ago:

Does anybody else have a 1px tall line running across the top of the new BBEdit document icon? (Not the one that Jon designed but the system-wide BBEdit .html or .txt file icon)

No.11

∞ Oli said 1988 days ago:

Unfortunately, for all its goodness, bbedit still is just butt ugly. Not only the icon. The toolbar looks like nothing I’ve ever seen in a Mac OS X app, the editor has silly options like optimising your window layout for a 13” screen (what’s that?? Mac IIse?? What does it do exactly?) and the sheer wealth of features (in itself a good thing) is very badly organized.

I am always downloading the newest version, always wanting to like it because it IS after all a very solid piece of software, but is also a showcase example of developers trying to design a user interface :-(

So I’m still using SubEthaEdit for XHTML coding, although I find it lacking important features like code snippets, html tidy integration, real server support… sigh

No.12

∞ patrick h. lauke said 1988 days ago:

fancy sharing your icon-design technique with us mere mortals at some point? that pen look very sweet indeed.

No.13

∞ Rob Mientjes said 1988 days ago:

Dude!

shocked

Wha!?

What have they done? This is horrible. Your version immediately makes it a Mac app, which of course is good. What a strange font for this purpose.

still shocked

No.14

∞ Jon Hicks said 1988 days ago:

Patrick – its easy. Just nick bits from the TextEdit icon!

No.15

∞ Mats Persson said 1988 days ago:

Thanks for the improved app icon !! I agree 100 % with you.

Shaun::
Yeah, I too have that visual irritation. However, it only seems to appear if you have ListView and ‘large’ icons enabled in that list view.

Oli::
Not meaning to be too rude here towards anyone in particular at BareBones, but they seem to be the perfect example of a company of “geeks and coders” who has a limited (please note diplomatic use of language there) visual and aestethic qualities. BBEdit is “butt-ugly” in many ways, and GUI wise so so YESTERDAY, but as long as there is no real alternative out there I will have to use it. Haven’t bought the upgrade yet, but will do so later on today.

What really gets me about BBEdit is that skEdit created by a 20 year computing student is in many aspects much better than BBEdit that has been on the market for a lot longer and is developed by a much bigger company. If skEdit can improve the speed, syntax colouring issues and a few other issues that I have mentioned to Sean, it will become my primary dev tool.

Why can’t BBEdit understand the power of the Safari Tab bar, and implement something similar in their ‘multi-document’ window ? Incorporate the file browser/Group browser in the drawer window ? Enable wider and better colour syntax highlighting ? If you know the answer, please explain !!

Many years ago I worked with EditPlus and HomeSite on Windows, and I have many days wanted to return to that. Unfortunately, I can’t stand the Windows issues that comes with using those superior apps. When it comes to code editing BBEdit is lightyears behind those two, and EditPlus doesn’t seem to have been updated in 3 years or so.

Apologies for the length.

No.16

∞ Mats Persson said 1988 days ago:

Aggh!!

Preview showed working HTML, but not post.
The mention of some apps above included their URLs, which are:

skEdit = http://www.skti.org/skEdit.php

EditPlus = http://www.editplus.com/

HomeSite = http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/

No.17

∞ Daniel Oliver said 1988 days ago:

Man, that looks smart I wish I could design icons like that “over lunch” that would take me days if not weeks to get even near that. Grumble.

Nice work, I think you should e-mail some abuse at them and offer them that to replace their poor effort.

No.18

∞ bradyj said 1988 days ago:

bless you. I downloaded the trial last night and almost had a minor stroke when I launched.

No.19

∞ Jeff Clark said 1988 days ago:

Oh GOD NO! I hate Comic Sans worse than … well I don’t know what but it’s pretty bad.

Help put the “sans” in Comic Sans – http://www.bancomicsans.com

No.20

∞ brian said 1988 days ago:

thank you jon! oh man, this is just what the doctor ordered.

hicks rules!

No.21

∞ Paul D said 1988 days ago:

Nice work, Jon.

Indeed, the main reason I haven’t tried using BBedit is the butt-ugly icon they have. Say what you will about books and covers, but if a Mac application can’t be troubled to have a nice, professionally designed icon, I don’t expect the interface or usability to be much good either.

That’s what sets so many Mac applications above their Windows equivalents. It’s not just the functionality, but the cleanness of the overall design and how much more efficient it helps you to be.

No.22

∞ Caleb Jaffa said 1988 days ago:

This is off topic sort of, but there is a new text editor that is going to be hitting town soon. TextMate looks like the Homesite like editor many many ‘switcher’ web developer has been pining for. I haven’t used it yet, but eagerly await the open beta in September. Information can be had from David Heinemeier Hansson’s blog this entry is particularly insightful TextMate: The missing editor for OS X which has links to videos of it in action.

On topic the icon is great and appreciated. I am running BBEdit 7 and demoing 8 so giving 8 the Smooth Icon treatment would have me confusing which is which in the dock. Thanks Jon.

No.23

∞ Chris Ruzin said 1988 days ago:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the new icon! I also noticed the fugly new icon and cringed when I first upgraded. Now I won’t be as embarrassed to have BBEdit running all the time.

No.24

∞ Michael Sheets said 1988 days ago:

Wonderful, now where is the matching document icons? :)

No.25

∞ Jon Hicks said 1988 days ago:

When alls said and done, my favourite is still skEdit. It does so much that I want it to. I couldn’t live without its code-hinting.

Textmate looks interesting, and worth keeping an eye on.

No.26

∞ Yannick L. said 1988 days ago:

Nice Icon there Jon. Definitely looks nicer and a lot simpler (IMO) than what they had. Not to mention the better font. =)

No.27

∞ Massimo said 1987 days ago:

You rule! Thanks! (^_)

No.28

∞ G. I. said 1987 days ago:

The original is better.

No.29

∞ phnk said 1987 days ago:

The French version of ban comic sans, FYI : http://phnk.com/bcs

Thanks for this sweet replacement icon!

No.30

∞ Chris Ruzin said 1987 days ago:

You know you can have BBEdit complete code for you too, without any third-party apps running alongside of BBEdit? I use it with PHP now and then.

Go to BBEdit’s site and find a glossary of the language you’re wanting to use. Then assign a key command to the Edit->Auto-complete Glossary menu item (I assigned F1). Now whenever you can’t remember that PHP function, type a couple letters in, hit F1 and up pops a list of available options.

I’ve also got a simple AppleScript that takes the selected text and looks it up at php.net. I assigned it to F2.

No.31

∞ Frederik Vandaele said 1987 days ago:

Even Achilles had his weakness… Thank you so substantially!

No.32

∞ Colin Viebrock said 1987 days ago:

There is this great icon for BBEdit in the SmoothIcons 9 package from Icon Factory:

No.33

∞ Jon Hicks said 1987 days ago:

Chris – but not for HTML & CSS? I can see various programming languages, but not the old bread and butter.

No.34

∞ Chris Ruzin said 1987 days ago:

I don’t think there’s anything available for HTML or CSS. The HTML one isn’t really in demand, I guess, since there’s the HTML palette. The CSS one would be nice, but there’s also the CSS palette.

Perhaps someone will make glossaries for them? I’m sure there would be people who could use them.

No.35

∞ Steve Riggins said 1987 days ago:

Nice job :)

No.36

∞ Carole E. Mah said 1987 days ago:

The “professionalism”, prettiness, etc. of fonts and icon designs are very, very subjective. To say (as one person did above) that you won’t buy it because you don’t like the icon is just ridiculous. You can change the icon if you really want to, and you really can’t judge a book by its cover.

Besides, I fail to see what is wrong with the BBEdit 8 icon as shipped. I would like someone to explain to me why Comic Sans is “not professional”. I’ve never heard such a subjective phrase as “not professional” when it comes to fonts.

It isn’t as if I am blindly prejudiced in favor of BBEdit. Although I’ve been a loyal BBEdit user since the very first release, I am also quite happy to use Emacs for things BBEdit doesn’t do well (for example, Emacs has a mode that handles XML so much better than BBEdit can). After all, there is no editor out there as powerful as Emacs.

No.37

∞ Jon Hicks said 1987 days ago:

I would like someone to explain to me why Comic Sans is “not professional”

You got to be kidding right?

No.38

∞ Paul D said 1987 days ago:

You must be joking if you can’t see that the official BBedit icon/logo is somewhat amateurish and pedestrian. That font is only partially to blame. It’s not the worst icon ever made, but it’s inappropriate for a Mac design application.

No.39

∞ timfm said 1987 days ago:

Thanks for an icon that “doesn’t suck” John.

No.40

∞ Toby Sterrett said 1987 days ago:

I have purchased BBEdit, skEdit and Tag all in the search for the perfect editor. I keep coming back to BBEdit, but I think it’s mostly because that’s what I spent a lot of money on and I have it the most dialed in with keyboard shortcuts and glossary items. The new document drawer is really nice and I think I may upgrade just for it along with the hope that someone will be able to create a codeless language module for PHP Smarty and the live PHP preview.

I think skEdit could be great if it handled currently open documents better. Some sort of tab system or key command to go through currently open documents would make me use it a lot more and maybe save me the $50 for BBEdit 8. I know Sean has it planned, but it’s pretty much here in BBEdit now. Jon, besides the code hinting, what do you find so much better about skEdit? Is there anything I’m missing?

No.41

∞ Patrick Wynne said 1986 days ago:

Like the new icon and I am using it right now.

I do think, however, that the little “B” looks squuezed in as an afterthought. I think it would be even better to just have the single “B” and angle it to look as if it were printed on the blue paper sheets.

Has anyone got a fix for the screwed up document icons?

No.42

∞ Veerle Pieters said 1986 days ago:

I’ve refused to double click this ugly BBEdit icon before I pasted yours on it ;-)

Maybe you should start up an affiliate program and ask a percentage on the clicks that your icon generates ;-P

THANK YOU!

No.43

∞ Chris R said 1986 days ago:

I would like someone to explain to me why Comic Sans is “not professional”

Because it is used for kids parties and town fares.

No.44

∞ brian said 1986 days ago:

i was just thinking, it might be even cooler if the document sheet in your icon had the large checkerboard like the original. help tie the old branding to the new aqualicious style. =)

No.45

∞ Nate said 1986 days ago:

It is a nice icon, but please, no more blue icons! Can’t it be any other color?

No.46

∞ Mathew said 1986 days ago:

Hmmm I was just thinking, what does the icon have anything to do with the program itself? It would be so horrible if the icon wasn’t using the right font or the colors didn’t blend the way you wanted them to.

No.47

∞ Silus Grok said 1986 days ago:

Lovely work (as always) Jon.

I have a little feedback, though, if you don’t mind: the blue is very important (this is BBEdit, after all), so don’t listen to the naysayers ; ) but I’d have to agree with the comment that the smaller B looks like an afterthought… why not just a single B? what was your thought process — was it to solve a problem? anyway, the only other comment I have is that the argyle pattern has been with us since damn near the beginning — sure would be nice to have it back, just super-imposed on the blue page would be perfect.

At any rate, these are just the suggestions of a fan.

Great work!

No.48

∞ Jaime Smith said 1985 days ago:

The new icon looks great. Good job.

Quick note about the site. I am having the same problem that Shaun Inman is having with 1 pixel tall white lines running across the top portion of the site. I am using FireFox 0.8 on Windows 2000 Server. It looks like a CSS problem. I am also having problems with the textarea to enter comments. In FireFox it’s only 3 characters wide by two columns tall. Pretty hard to enter comments. Are any other FireFox users having the same problem?

No.49

∞ Keith said 1985 days ago:

I just upgraded to BBEdit 8, really a great app – I use it all the time.

Regarding CSS auto-completion, there is a contextual menu that will show all available properties for a style rule. I know it’s not quite the same thing, but it’s great to right-click (or control-click for one button mousers) right in place in a CSS document and get that list. Great for when the brain locks up.

Also, I wanted to mention the text editor called HyperEdit (http://www.tumultco.com/HyperEdit/) by Tumult. It’s really grown on me and is a compliment to BBEdit for XHTML, CSS, PHP editing specifically (for me, anyway). It has a great preview pane built-in and will even run PHP code right in the editor showing you the results. There’s also code snippets which are indespensible and validation – just really very cool.

No.50

∞ Jon Hicks said 1985 days ago:

Keith, its better than nothing – I wasn’t aware of that, thanks. However, nothing beats writing css and html in skEdit for me. The code hinting and automatic tag completion makes writing really fast.

Toby – There are several other advantages to using skEdit for me. Site management, view all files in the site in a sidebar, image previews, snippets, colour blending (choose 2 colours to and vary the blend – very nice!), code navigation (like SubEthaEdit). Having said all that, there is a nasty undo bug that has occasionally screwed up a file.

No.51

∞ Mike D. said 1985 days ago:

Carole,

Pay a visit to the official Ban Comic Sans website for some good propaganda on why you should never, ever, under any circumstance use this font.

Sidenote: After I wrote an article mocking Comic Sans, someone actually sent me a good piece of information—It turns out Comic Sans is one of the best fonts ever designed, if you’re dyslexic. Because the letterforms are so asymmetrical (see: ugly as fuck), dyslexics tend to find them quite a bit more readable.

No.52

∞ Khoi Vinh said 1984 days ago:

Let me add my voice to the chorus in declaring BBEdit to be less than beautiful. This substitute icon is slick, but what I really want are Aqua-style replacements for those awful mid-90’s-style icons in the program’s toolbar. Please!

No.53

∞ Jon Hicks said 1983 days ago:

BBEdit hasn’t changed much since the OS 9 days, and its showing its age. The OS X drawer shows up those icons even more.

No.54

∞ Peter said 1982 days ago:

Carole wrote:

I would like someone to explain to me why Comic Sans is “not professional”

and got the replies:

You got to be kidding right?

and

Because it is used for kids parties and town fares

How about giving a proper answer? I agree it’s not the best font and it has certainly been overused; but as comment 51 pointed out it is great for dyslexics. All Humanities exam papers at my University are now printed in Comic Sans on cream paper for this reason. I think it looks really ugly, but it’s certainly harder to skim a page and miss important information (as if I’d be tempted to do that…).

In situations like this I wonder if there really is a good reason for the attitude towards anyone who doesn’t vehmently hate Comic Sans – or is it just because it’s trendy to bash it, like bashing Microsoft? It is a font after all – and every font has its rightful place.

I looked through the ban comic sans site and couldn’t find any coherent argument as to why it was bad. So, perhaps Carole could have some sensible replies now?

To put it another way: if someone doesn’t know better then educating, rather than bashing, is the best way to change opinions (think IE -> Firefox).

No.55

∞ Jon Hicks said 1982 days ago:

Whoah there Peter.

OK, first of all, it sounded like Carole was joking, which why I didn’t bother giving a reasoned response

Second – its not Microsoft bashing. They bought Verdana and Georgia to just about every computer in the world. Without those, our choices would be even more limited than they are now.

Third – Yes its good for dyslexics, I give you that.

Fourth – You nailed it when you said “It is a font after all – and every font has its rightful place”. Exactly. Comic Sans was created to mimic comic book speech bubble text. Chris’s response sums it up too. Its used for kids parties. Would you use a traditonal serif font for a kids part invite? Not unless the party games involve discussing Plato. Is a childish, ‘fun’ font an appropriate choice on the icon for a professional programmers text editor? No.

Fifth – what doesn’t help Comic Sans is the fact that its used everywhere. When people put a ‘for sale’ notice up in their car, they might use Comic Sans. Using it in a professional context is out of place. It was never intended for that kind of use.

No.56

∞ Peter said 1982 days ago:

bq. Would you use a traditonal serif font for a kids party invite? Not unless the party games involve discussing Plato.

If you ever get one… do pass it to me, I’d love to see a bunch of kids playing games discussing Plato :-D

Thanks for your measured response to my rather heated outburst. One far more laid back note this time:

* It would be interesting to see if a better font could be created for dyslexics – a search turned up one or two, my favourite of which was Read Regular which I found much easier to read on screen than the average font.

Oh, and I do have a hated font:- American Type Founders’ BrushScript. Something to do with having to use it in an inappropriate way for a society – and then they wondered why their concert posters’ weren’t legible…

No.57

∞ Jon Hicks said 1982 days ago:

Ooof! Don’t get me started on Brushscript!

No.58

∞ Frederik De Bleser said 1982 days ago:

First off, what a great feeling to have found a peer group. I thought I was the only one hating the new icon.

However, altough your icon is easier on the eye, it is by no means ‘better’. The problem is that it doesn’t capture the spirit of the original icon. It doesn’t have that creative, by-coders-for-coders attitude that the version 7 (and in an over-the-top way verision 8) icon had. The icon from the Smoothicons 9 series captures that spirit better: there’s the very typical letter ‘B’ and the even more typical colors, two elements that are nowhere to be found in your design.

To round off, I think it’s great that people are expressing their concern with the logo, but creating an icon that totally wipes away 10 years of editor history is not acceptable. BBEdit has such an emotional value, and the icon symbolises that. (Altough it does get uglier in every version…)

No.59

∞ Jon Hicks said 1982 days ago:

Frederik – this icon ‘is what it is’, an icon I created for my personal use that I’ve put up here in case anyone else want to use it. Thats all. This is not a proposal to BareBones to change to my icon. Far from it! “not acceptable” is a bit over the top for what it is!

(I hated the checkerboard design, so I didn’t bring that element over). I did use the original icons colours however.

No.60

∞ Toby Sterrett said 1982 days ago:

Keith, I’m not sure if you saw this was added, but BBEdit now has live previews with PHP parsing. You have to set things up in the BBEdit HTML Web Sites prefs and point it to your localhost server that parses your PHP and it works…kind of a roundabout way of doing it, but it’s there and works pretty well.

No.61

∞ Toby Sterrett said 1982 days ago:

Also regarding the whole comic sans thing, is the new BBEdit icon even using comic sans? I always figured it was some sort of tie in with the Text Wrangler W and uses whatever font that is.

No.62

∞ Sara Thuip said 1978 days ago:

The BBEdit 8 icon has that, “Uh,oh…I think the developer discovered the clip art folder,” helpless feel to it.

I kind of like BBEdit’s retro UI. I remember reading in an old MacWorld magazine that BBEdit oozed geekiness. I think that captures my perception of it. Sort of a one step forward from Word 6 feel to it. It reminds me of Quark’s pathetic attempt at getting XPress to work in OS X.

No.63

∞ Mark Hurty said 1976 days ago:

[quote] Does anybody else have a 1px tall line running across the top of the new BBEdit document icon? (Not the one that Jon designed but the system-wide BBEdit .html or .txt file icon) [/quote]

There’s a 1px stripe across the top of the mask layer for the 32×32 pixel in BBEditTextDocument.icns (and perhaps the other document icons.) You can open the icon with Icon Composer if you have the developer tools installed and you’ll see the problem. Copy the mask for the 32×32 icon, paste it into photoshop, remove the 1px line (make it white), copy, and paste back into Icon Composer. Save. (You should probably work on a copy of BBEditTextDocument.icns, which is found in the resources folder inside the BBEdit package.) After you replace BBEditTextDocument.icns with your newly edited version, you can relaunch the finder to see your changes.

You can also use Photoshop/Icon Composer to make a new document icon. Make something you like, create an alpha channel for the transparency mask, save. From Icon Composer import the Photoshop document. Let IC extract the alpha channel from the photoshop doc. Voila! (again, you have to replace the BBEditTextDocument.icns in the BBEdit package, and relaunch the finder to see changes.)

No.64

∞ Jamison said 1974 days ago:

I’ve been wanting exactly this for a long time. The BBEdit icons sticks out like a sore thumb on my dock sitting between Address Book and Preview (with Acquisition and iChat on either of those) and it wasn’t just the logo, it’s the fact it didn’t sit on the same perspective grid as so many Apple applications do.

I’ve always hoped more developers would replace their icons with ones that are more in keeping with Apple’s own, but aside from a few exceptions, like Acqisition they tend to do things more BBEdit.

That’s why a while ago I replaced my BBEdit icon with one from Icon Factory’s World of Auqa series (it’s a chackboard, part of the World of Aqua 4 collection, for which they don’t have a preview) but unfortunately it kind of lost any BBEdit feel to it. That may not be to bad, since I mentally associate BBEdit with bad, engineer designed interfaces not meant for mere mortals such as myself.

Thank you!

No.65

∞ jheyer said 1974 days ago:

Jon,

I think the “undo bug” in skEdit has been fixed in the latest beta release.

How about that write-up on how you make your beautiful icons?

No.66

∞ Tom Flemming said 1970 days ago:

Brilliant.

When can we see an icon for the documents?

No.67

∞ Sir Not Appearing in this Blog said 1970 days ago:

Well, I don’t really mind either the original or revised icons. Seems pretty clear to me that it’s NOT Comic Sans. It matches the “W” in the TextWrangler icon.

I’m not sure I really care for Jon’s new icon either…maybe if you removed the second, smaller “B” it would look better. Or make them both the same size… Otherwise it looks very nice.