These are the Office icons that Microsoft rejected

Microsoft is busy with the rollout New curvy and colorful Office iconsNow it reveals a set of design concepts that it experimented with before putting the final touches on these new icons. some Concepts It’s radically different from what Microsoft offers, with design explorations of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that are very similar Office icons for Mac From the past.

The Word concept icons (above) include a notepad-like experience and different ways to visualize stacks of paper or documents. Microsoft has experimented with making Word’s letters the main part of the icon, as well as versions where the letters blend in or are completely absent. Microsoft eventually settled on a design that has three horizontal bars instead of four, and uses versions of the icon with and without lettering.

Microsoft places a lot of emphasis on the use of cells in existing and new Excel icons, and concepts rarely differ from this. I really like the X icon, but the rest is similar to what Microsoft came up with for the final icon.

PowerPoint has always been about slides, and Microsoft has tried a variety of ways to visualize that for its latest PowerPoint icons. Some concepts focus on letters, turning out to be a ribbon-like letter P or a letter P with a circular outline hanging from it. The final icon design is much more tame, with a more rounded and colorful take on the existing PowerPoint icon.

All the new Microsoft Office icons — including new designs for Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, and OneNote — are rolling out across Windows and iOS now. Microsoft seems to use versions with letters in Windows, but for iOS it opts for icons that don’t contain special characters.

What do you think? Are there any concept versions that you prefer over the final designs chosen by Microsoft?