There are a lot of nice designs, but so far nobody has been able to really determine which design elements in the current FreeCAD icon are deficient and why each is deficient. Without first defining what should be improved in the current icon, how can any proposed icon be objectively considered as being better? Although the vernier caliper logos look nice I'm not quite sold
on them - somehow it reminds me of the manual (board) drafting days, and can't help but think that a digital caliper would be more appropriate for a CAD program.
The one criticism
of the existing icon I read that makes sense to me is that the gear appears to be trapped by the "F" and that contradicts a meaning "Free".
Another thought is that logos have generally evolved from starting as being somewhat more complicated or embellished designs to into becoming designs that still recognizably convey a brand while using fewer elements or simpler designs. The FreeCAD logo is already pretty simple and it is already instantly recognizable - I've seen a lot of new icon proposals but not many explanations of why any is "better".
For Reference:
The FreeCAD icon in 2013:
As changed in 0.16:
The current FreeCAD icon (revised per FreeCAD / Tango guidelines):
From 0.16 to 0.17 the icon became more complex, and that was done by agryson to help visibility by creating contrast on both light and dark themes. Blue and red are used in the 3 icons above and are also predominant colors in the FreeCAD GUI (and in the splash screens).
I did like that when I had both FreeCAD 0.16 and 0.17 installed, the icons for each version were different in the launcher (now with 0.17 and 0.18 they're both the same).
Just my 2 cents...
blue = edit
