The icons and splash screens for CS3 were beautiful—simple and well executed. They were iconic. They got slightly worse with CS5, and as you’ve probably noticed, outright awful with CS6. They are executed with a style that would’ve been perceived as “cool” about 10 years ago.

Adobe has published a detailed case study explaining their process. Let me translate the first few paragraphs:

“It takes well over a year to design, execute, deliver, and ensure the proper implementation of the roughly 5,000 or so assets it takes to get a CS release out the door (we’re already thinking about CS7). Along the away, there are innumerable institutional, technological, and political hurdles to overcome. It can be daunting, but we do everything we can to get it made with as few design compromises as possible.”

Adobe is a fucking huge corporation. To get anything approved here takes ages and requires tons of compromises. You’ve no idea what we’ve been through.

“We know that every release requires change and that the change will make some people unhappy. Like many of you, we are life-long users and fans of the tools, and we do our best to create something that we can be proud of, knowing full well that some people will not agree with our choices. Then again, if no one reacts negatively, it’s probably not very interesting.”

If you don’t like this new approach you’re probably a conservative coward who hates change. Yes. It’s your fault. Now stop complaining.

“In this regard, we consider our work for CS6 a success. We achieved our design goals, met the technical requirements, and shipped it more or less in the form we imagined. If you’ve ever done design work for a big company, you will understand why this is cause for celebration.”

If you disregard from any sensible definition of what constitutes great design—then this is great design. Or at least, you know, we came to work for an entire year and managed to deliver on time. That’s an achievement. Right?

Adobe is spending a lot of time designing things that shouldn’t even exist. Your app doesn’t need a splash screen. If it does, you should probably make it launch faster. Your app doesn’t need an installer with an entirely custom UI. You neither need to make drastic changes to your brand with every new software release: it doesn’t make your brand any stronger.

Adobe needs to take a step back and start refining and simplifying. They own a great brand concept—the periodical table—but they’re about to lose it to complexity, bureaucracy and cheesy effects.