In a recent article in Medium written by head of Microsoft Office design, Jon Friedman, he revealed how the newest version of icons were evolved to support the changing environment of design.

The article states, “… design teams across the company came together as a collective to develop design guidelines that encourage individuality while creating a cohesive whole. “

Allovus is proud of our talented folks who worked as part of the team to make this happen – people like David Hose and Mike LaJoie.

“The project started with the release of a core set of 10 Office apps; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc.,” David said. “The style was established over the course of one year. It was a collaboration with several internal design teams at Microsoft.”

David joined the Office team just as the style was rolled out little over a year ago. His first task was to created hundreds of assets for each of the “Core 10” ranging in size and formats.

“One of the biggest challenges was the system was so different than the current monochromatic Office app icons,” David said. “The process wasn’t tested and had an aggressive release schedule. We ran into several bumps in the road where changes and decisions needed to be made on the fly.”

But the most rewarding part, he said, is “seeing the icons I’ve designed used on a global scale. How cool is that?!”