10 RSS Icons That Suck

by jrrl in Templature :: posted September 21, 2007 :: last modified July 11, 2008

By now everyone should know the ubiquitous RSS icon with its orange gradient and white arcs and circle. It is a standard that can be fit into just about any website design with some appropriate color modification. And yet there are those who feel they know better. They replace the standard with their own RSS icon, whether it be a variant of the original or something completely different. Here are some of the worst offenders.

1. JustaGroove

JustaGroove’s Ben Mitchell is a talented web designer, as one can clearly see from his portfolio. Unfortunately, in his blog, he decided to forgo the standard RSS icon for a version that matches his website’s logo. As if that weren’t enough, he didn’t copy the circle and arcs from the official version. Instead the arcs don’t share a common center and the circle is too big, ruining the broadcast metaphor.

2. Fluxiom

2. For all of Fluxiom’s Web 2.0 stylings, their RSS icon is just wrong. While they do try to keep the emanation symbolism, it looks more like a tennis ball bouncing around, which is probably not a message they want to project. Developing your own version of something that already works is rarely a good plan.

3. KXLY

KXLY is an ABC affiliate in Idaho with dark red and blue as their signature colors. Unfortunately, some clever designers felt the need to share this color scheme with the RSS icon. That itself might have been fine and possibly even attractive, but they were also struck by the urge to add a bevel and shadow to the ball and arcs and to remove the rounded corners. Even ignoring any violations of the standard, the final effect looks so inelegant and out of date that it might have come from 1998.

4. TimePiecer

TimePiecer, a seemingly abandoned blog about watches and, well, timepieces is not the only site to make this next mistake. It just happened to be the one I came across first. Here the designers rebuilt the whole logo, while attempting to keep it looking mostly the same. The result has some minor cosmetic flaws that a little more care could have solved. The corners are not round enough and the arcs are too thin. Also, the gradient is linear rather than bilinear. A clumsy implementation that looks a bit amateurish, but might be forgivable, except… what is with the square? Apparently the source of broadcast in this version is a box. I am not sure what the desired effect of this was, especially on a site about mostly round things (clocks and watches), but it feels forced.

5. BEST, I. A.

Based on what I can glean from their site, BEST, I.A. is an only store focused on CDs from the Czech republic. Their products range from a fairy tale series called Buby the Dragon to what seems to be “songs of communism” to popular Czech musicians. If finding a common thread to that is confusing, it is nothing compared to their take on the RSS icon. I cannot decide if they wanted to make the icon reader-focused by moving the circle to a receiving position, or they wanted it to look like a person in a sort of gymnastic pose. Regardless, it is similar enough to the standard to be recognizable, but different enough to be unnerving.

6. Bridal Party Tees

Bridal Party Tees produces simple, yet clever t-shirts for, duh, bridal parties. On the blog, however, their RSS icon variant is neither simple nor clever. I’ll grant that it bears a family resemblance to the standard icon, but only in so much as a platypus bears a family resemblance to an otter. Both might be warm blooded and happy in the water, but one seems normal and the other… not so much. It has so many things wrong with it that it looks like nature got confused halfway through the recipe and accidentally turned the page before finishing. Stick to t-shirts, folks.

7. Britvic

Britvic is a big company (they make and distribute beverages in the UK, including Pepsi). Not Microsoft big, but quite sizeable, with a market capitalization over a billion dollar. But money can’t buy clue, so they have decided to eschew everything about the usual RSS icon, except the orange color. In its place, they have an orange (or a peach or apricot or something), in an attempt to play off of their corporate logo’s fruit-styled letter ‘c’. Of course, nothing else on the site follows this motif, so it seems like an orphan, neither fitting in with its surroundings nor standing on its own as a well-recognized symbol.

8. RLS Enterprises

RLS Enterprises sells technology-based training system. But they don’t seem to have learned to stick to standards. In fact, what they use for an RSS icon doesn’t even really qualify as a icon. It’s just a circle with “RSS” on it. Attractive, yes. Iconic, no. Standard exist for a reason.

9. BobbySky

Bobby Sky is a graphic designer who works on everything from web and print to art and photography. Check out his portfolio. He also does identity work, which is what makes his RSS icon choice all the more baffling. A big part of identity is consistency and clarity. There is a clear icon for RSS out there, but instead we get a star with text. It fits in very well with the design of the site, but it sure doesn’t say “RSS” (except in the literal sense).

10. Microsoft

A whole bonus set here. Back in October 2005, the IE 7.0 team at Microsoft was consider hijacking the RSS icon-space with their own. Eventually, more cooperative minds prevailed and they chose to use the standard icon that Firefox had promoted. Had that not happened, we could have been saddled with some/all of these variants.