The pencil, too, is only just about visible. In the start menu’s slightly larger icon size you can just about make it out. But when I rendered it as the small size of icon that shows up on the taskbar, well… It looks decent, but the “++” application text just isn’t visible at all. Iteration 2 – now with pencilįor a first iteration, I thought this looked pretty good. So I recreated the pencil, this time fitting vertical aligned with the rest of the icon. Without that, the notepad logo just doesn’t sit right with me.

Still fairly recognisable, right? Iteration 1 For the foreground instead of using the usual abbreviation “n++”, which would never fit into a small square, I used “++”. I made the “app representation” be a simple rectangle similar to Word’s. The greens and yellows are set quite apart from any other application icons I see on my system. To replicate this with notepad++ I decided to keep the existing colours as much as possible – they are nice and recognisable. There are two main parts to each of the icons: A stylised representation of the application in the background, and a branding letter in the foreground: New Microsoft Office icon set The Iterations

Notepad ++ icon