Abstract App Icons Within Icons
The App Store icon is made up of three app icons supporting each other (like apps on the App Store do).
Just like the Shortcuts is two app icons, connected in the middle (like shortcuts connecting your apps together).
All these years, I thought the “new” App Store icon was just an abstract version of the original, with the A-shaped pencil and paint brush replaced by plain lines. But he says it’s actually a side view of 3D squircles representing app icons. This is also the basis for the Shortcuts icon (which I never understood) and TestFlight (the blades are apps).
Christian Selig, creator of Apollo for Reddit and Pixel Pals, went a step further and apparently spent the evening fully designing, printing, and sharing a 3D model of the App Store logo using his 3D printer[…]
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However, with Liquid Glass, it has in fact been reduced to three popsicle sticks.
Previously:
Update (2025-12-11): Andreas Storm:
Apple just proved that the App Store icon is cleverly designed using 3 simple app shapes.
Fun fact: this modern App Store glyph was itself based on the old OS X icon from its icon design paradigm: apps were represented by documents and tools, realistically rendered in perspective.
The icon for ‘apps’ was a collection of tools: a pencil, brush and ruler.
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This explanation only makes it less explicable, because that's not how app icons have ever been conceptualized to look in side profile, based on shading, shadows, and Icon Composer.
The App Store icon replaced the artistic tools (pencil, brush, ruler) with popsicle sticks to represent the average quality of what it offers.
"he says it’s actually a side view of 3D squircles"
This doesn't make sense. If they represented a side view of squircles, they couldn't be physically arranged as they are in the icon.
But it's funny that the icons have become so terrible that we no longer have any idea what they even represent.
@Rob Mayoff @Plume
This is all tangental.
Last night I found the original install discs on Macintosh Garden for a 17" Intel Core2Duo (white) iMac (2006 CD model) that I rescued. I restored the ISOs to a flash drive and then restored the machine to its stock configuration.
A (dubious, imo) 3d model is cool, but having that early Intel iMac with 10.4 sitting next to my M4 iMac, man the loss of substance is just beyond words. Tiger on said machine feels so comfy and homey, brushed metal and all.
Man I miss those 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 days.
"Apple just proved that the App Store icon is cleverly designed using 3 simple app shapes."
If you look at the animation, you will notice that it actually disproves the theory. To change the lines into three-dimensional app icons, they first have to be disentangled; while they still each lie on top of each other, they can't possibly be app icons.
