ExpanDrive

So in the coming days/weeks/months, ExpanDrive is getting a new icon, both because the current horseshoe-shaped magnet isn’t particularly unique, and because really big magnets and hard drives don’t exactly play well together. Obviously, I’m excited to see what we get, but would like to make one request: no birds.

Seriously, they’re freakin’ everywhere. I remember back in the day when I first stumbled across Adium. I was like “huh, the icon’s a fruity little duck”, but with OTR chat support and totally customizable user interface, who was I to complain?

A few years later, before ExpanDrive made my choice of SFTP client utterly moot, I brought Cyberduck, which sports yet another birdy little icon, into my apps folder. Shortly thereafter, Gaim, Adium’s Windows doppelgänger became Pidgin, and another avian icon hit the software scene.

Around 2006, they began popping up everywhere. ZeFrank, for example, suddenly developed a sweet spot for duckies, which kind of seems a step down from his previous infatuations with kitties and stirring the pot of love. I’ve been using NeoOffice (which rocks a sweet pirate ship icon) for a while, but just the other day, as I was rooting through an old harddrive, I noticed the subtle bird references inserted into OpenOffice.

I decided things were getting downright Hitchcockian when I started looking for something lighter than WordPress, but equally hackable, for my homepage blog. Chyrp fit the bill perfectly–with one tiny exception.

So, yeah. I’d prefer an icon with no birds. In fact, I’d like to maybe see something that kills birds, like DDT or an automatic shotgun. Y’know, just in case. I realize bird-killing things don’t have all that much to do with SFTP or hard drives, but that’s what you pay designers for, right?

Until then, just be careful what sort of information you reveal over Twitter. The birds are everywhere…and they’re watching.