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  "path": "/2026/05/11/how-does-it-make-you-feel/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-11T14:18:46.000Z",
  "site": "https://nuno-icons.com",
  "textContent": "So… while doing some work on Oxygen I noticed there was no camera-video icon.\n\nNo Oxygen one.\nWille there was already a recently done symbolic one.\n\nWhich honestly felt a bit odd considering cameras are one of those objects designers historically cant resist over designing heee… (but then again i got a bit 2 distracted about the future and forgot to look behind me at what was still pretty good)\n\nSo I ended up making both versions almost back to back.\n\nNow… I already knew exactly what was going to happen.\n\nI have been doing Oxygen style icons for long enough to know the amount of work involved. Big reflections, materials, shadows, details nobody consciously notices just to change how the icon feels. And to hide my incompetence as a simple designer\n\nIt was not just “camera” and realy not a video one but….. It was trying to be a camera. A object. Somthing with texture and personality. Still …. Probably 3 days of work.\n\nThe symbolic one on the other hand took minutes.\n\nAnd honestly… I like symbolic icons. This is not one of those “flat design killed civilization” posts\n\nBut it did make me think again about something I keep repeating over and over:\n“Less is a bore.” as Robert Venturi said.\n\nPeople usually read that as a attack on minimalism. But I don’t.\n\nReduction is useful. Clarity is useful. Symbolic icons are useful. You also cant hide your design failures as easily, and they can work really well.\n\nThe problem for me starts when simplification becomes emotionally neutral. Copy of a copy of a copy of a nothing.\n\nBecause thats the thing I care about the most when designing anything. Not beauty exactly… beauty is subjective and honestly kinda impossible to define in any meaningful way.\n\nWhat interests me more is emotional impact.\n\n_**How does it make you feel?**_\n\nNot stricly rationally. But mostly Emotionally.\n\nThe Oxygen/old\\new/skeo\\etc icon is probably excessive and maybe even a little ridiculous. Tiny fake reflections, fake materials, dramatic shadows… but then again thats also what gives it character I think??. It tries to create an “atmosphere” instead of just identifying a function.\n\nAnd to me atmosphere matters.\n\nHumans are not rationalist grid systems no matter how much “modern” design sometimes pretends we are. We remember things emotionally first. Movies, music, old game menus, interfaces…\n\nNowdays many interfaces and design languages just feel efficient. Functional. Fast. But also weirdly interchangeable.\n\nAnd I think thats why so many modern interfaces evaporate from memory so quickly. Perfectly boring floating in UI space. Visually correct but emotionally silent.\n\nWhich to me always felt ironic because modernism originally was full of emotion. Optimism. Utopianism. The future as a aesthetic project. Somewhere along the way people kept the reduction but forgot the passion behind it.\n\nAnyway… making these two icons back to back ended up being more interesting than I expected.\n\nThey will both be available in PlasmaShell near you….\n\nP.S. welcome to my new home, I’m still alive\n\nI’m probably gona make a video with some crazy ideas for a over the top theme in QML, kinda as a exercise on the sort of things that should be possible in theme engines. Because even with QML giving us allot more creative freedom people still somehow end up making mostly the same thing over and over again.",
  "title": "“how does it make you feel”"
}