Microsoft’s Fluent Design Continues Forward with New Icons

A couple of years ago at Build, Microsoft made a huge splash with their new design language that they were calling Fluent. At the time, it created a lot of excitement but up until now, we have only been seeing the updated design show up scattered across the Microsoft ecosystem.

But it looks like that is on the horizon of changing. Jon Friedman penned a post on Medium that talks about how the company is redesigning over 100 icons and has shown off several that had not been previously implemented.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

[ad unit=’in_content_premium_block’]

For a company as large as Microsoft, getting all teams (not Teams) onboard is a serious challenge. The company has hundreds of products and even more icons to rework but it looks like the fruits of that labor is starting to materialize.

We have seen the mobile versions of Office being updated recently and with this latest post, I have hope that we will soon see the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem adopt Fluent as well. The most obvious being Windows 10 which has about half of Fluent implemented (and maybe we can get a more robust and cohesive dark them too).

With Microsoft wrapping up 20H1 at this time, I will be curious to see if they try to slide in any more new icons into that release or if the new icons shown off today, make their way to 20H2.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 16 comments

  • willc

    12 December, 2019 - 2:31 pm

    <p>This will only turn Windows 10 into even more of a hideous and inconsistent mess. </p>

  • Thom77

    12 December, 2019 - 3:05 pm

    <p>Meanwhile, Xbox controller on PC still wont connect if you previously used your controller with another device, like an iPad, forcing you to uninstall the controller and reinstall it. </p><p><br></p><p>But those icons look cool.</p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      12 December, 2019 - 4:12 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#497748">In reply to Thom77:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yeah because an icon designer has the knowledge to fix that problem. Good Grief!</p>

      • Thom77

        12 December, 2019 - 7:26 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#497754">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Never said they did.</p><p><br></p><p>But i will criticize a company for focusing on irrelevant crap while blatant problems remain unfixed for us average consumers.</p><p><br></p><p>Decisions are made way higher then icon developers on what to focus on.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

        • VancouverNinja

          Premium Member
          12 December, 2019 - 7:51 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#497844">In reply to Thom77:</a></em></blockquote><p>Sounds like you don't understand that they have different teams for different areas of development. Quality takes time; there are laws of diminishing returns. All I can see is a platform that is leaving its competitors behind in the dust at this point.</p>

        • lvthunder

          Premium Member
          12 December, 2019 - 8:13 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#497844">In reply to Thom77:</a></em></blockquote><p>A company the size of Microsoft can focus on more then one thing at a time. The Designers can focus on the icons while the xbox controller driver people can focus on your issue. Not everyone's priorities are the same as yours. For what I use computers for I could call the XBOX controller working on Windows at all is irrelevant crap to use your words.</p>

  • Rainer Fuchs

    Premium Member
    12 December, 2019 - 3:16 pm

    <p>Yawn</p>

  • VancouverNinja

    Premium Member
    12 December, 2019 - 3:40 pm

    <p> Very nice to see the progress.</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    12 December, 2019 - 6:30 pm

    <p>Mental image of Steve Martin in <em>The Jerk</em> jumping up and down yelling <em>The new icons are here!</em></p>

  • luthair

    12 December, 2019 - 6:54 pm

    <p>I've been wondering, why is Microsoft using the Thunderbird logo for Edge.</p>

  • will

    Premium Member
    12 December, 2019 - 7:40 pm

    <p>I would guess there are many more hundreds of icons that are still old from the XP days or even pre XP that need to be updated. Hopefully it will not just stop with the top 100, but continue on.</p>

    • mclark2112

      Premium Member
      12 December, 2019 - 8:51 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#497847">In reply to will:</a></em></blockquote><p>Control Panel, ugh.</p>

  • red.radar

    Premium Member
    13 December, 2019 - 8:39 am

    <p>I like the icons. I thought it was silly at first, but it does provide the impression that the entirety of Microsoft’s product portfolio is fresh. </p><p><br></p><p>the icons also are classy enough that I think they will look good for quite a while. </p><p><br></p><p>it’s a subtle but positive change </p>

  • waethorn

    13 December, 2019 - 10:31 am

    <p>And yet they still can't get Office deployment from the Store to work….</p>

  • flying_maverick

    Premium Member
    13 December, 2019 - 3:03 pm

    <p>Why does it take so long to roll out new icons? </p>

  • micklevin

    13 December, 2019 - 8:04 pm

    <p>Oh, few new icons this month… With this pace the Fluent Design (introduced … how many years ago?) would be complete way past predicted Singularity :-/</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC