Seems like the entire blog­ging world is in a fervor about the new CS3 icons. Check out Daring Fire­ball for links to just about every rel­e­vant con­ver­sa­tion going on right now on the subject.

My take on it: Yeah, the icons are pretty ugly. Just a little bit boring. I really like the direc­tion they’re going in though, because I was hon­estly never a fan of the older CS-​era icons. Sounds like most people agree that the CS icons were pretty, but use­less as far as remem­ber­ing which icon belonged to which pro­gram (I’m for­ever open­ing up Illus­tra­tor or InDe­sign by acci­dent). I like how the icons bring together the suite, but over­all it doesn’t seem quite right yet. The Acro­bat icon choice is under­stand­able, but it’s still just plain goofy when you put it next to all of the other. Over­all, it feels like a rough idea that could be headed in the right direction.

My biggest ques­tion was about the Illus­tra­tor icon. Why is it Ai? I think that is about the least intu­itive abbre­vi­a­tion ever. It’s the only app that includes Adobe in its two let­ters. Luck­ily, my burn­ing ques­tion just got answered (I might have even lost sleep over this) in the com­ments sec­tion of John Nack’s blog on the sub­ject. [For the record, I still don't agree with the Ai for Illustrator.]