I’m Just Asking….

Posted by | 05/18/2009 | 9 Comments

What’s the deal with red, yellow, green, and blue icons these days. Oh, and Google’s Chrome icon looks eerily familiar to Windows Media Player, ya think?

Google Chrome, AVG, and Windows Media Player

Google Chrome, AVG, and Windows Media Player

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Category: Software

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  • Clayton

    Haha, I’ve thought this many times! I guess we’re just fans of bright colors. @_@ Microsoft Visual Studio is the same, but that’s just because the windows logo has all four colors. I have no clue why AVG and Chrome have that.

  • SAM

    It’s a conspiracy…

  • Eve

    my desktop is lacking for a nice purple icon – i’ve got the rest of the spectrum pretty well represented. let me know what the software is and i’ll download it just to brighten up the desktop palette.

  • Osiris

    Your puny human brains are sensitive to colours and on a sub conscious level respond to colours from an overall message. Bright warm or ‘positive’ colours are just one of the many formulations designed to be desirable/attention grabbing on that level.

    Makes sense really, presentation and smell all impact on how you respond to food…the tone we use to speak to one another says subtle things beyond just the words etc.

  • Darren

    @Eve: When I read purple icon, the first thing that came to mind was Eclipse. It’s an open-source IDE (alternative to Visual Studio), but it’s an 68Mb+ download depending on the language… Wouldn’t it be easier to just create a purple icon and replace an existing shortcut with it? ;)

  • Ryan P.

    I like to have Windows Media Player and Chrome on my Quick Launch toolbar, and I used to occasionally click on the wrong one because they look so similar. No such problem, now that I’m using the Win7 RC.

  • enterman

    See this is why I use Media Monkey, Firefox, and ESET when I’m in windows. No crazy corporation conspiracy is gonna take me down! But I mean seriously, we all know Google in run by aliens.

  • http://chadwsmith.com Chad W Smith

    The Windows icon and Office icon has always been those colors. (Blue, Red, Yellow, Green)

  • Ben

    I think the Chrome icon also looks a bit like a pokeball (from pokemon). It’s kinda hard to choose very distinct colors outside of the primary colors, plus yellow.

    For purple, you could also try Pidgin (aka Gaim).