Oof, has there really been three years since I started this? (Well, five if you count my custom toolbar where this thread began.)
Finally got all the “standard” toolbar icons replaced now (some are still first drafts):
Funny, it’s all SVG but I recently went back to Rhino 7 (it just looks cleaner and has less bugs).
Now, only 13 toolbars to go (and countless pop-up toolbars)… 
EDIT: Couldn’t help myself… had some more ideas…
Lovely work; this is what I’ve been wanting to do with my Rhino since I first laid eyes on the UI.
What software do you use to create these, Illustrator? And what’s your workflow like? I assume you’ve streamlined your process a lot to have a chance at getting all the icons done before Rhino 10 
I use Affinity Designer. Apart from the re-used icons, I did only start on it last week and only in between other stuff I was doing… so finding time to do it is the toughest. We’ll see if I’m still using Rhino when 10 comes around or if I’m retired by then. 
I’m not sure if this works in Rhino 8 as well, but lately I’ve had the document info on the right most of the status bar (in your screenshot, it’s the pane that says “Selected block instance count: 1”) set to have the current object layer info as the only selected option. It’s a workaround and kind of wastes the other potential filters though. I wish those sections of the UI could have their order sorted (i.e. drag the current object/layer info pane to the right most so that it can take up more space if the object layer address is long, so that I can still use the Info pane for its other categories.
thanks for the workaround! only issue is that it has a slight delay but unless i’m missing another way this will have to do.
I think whoever this is person just won this thread:
This is just 
EDIT: Looks like @rhinoui just registered here (they should create a new thread with more information regarding their customizations, hopefully).
Wow, this is an amazing post. I just realized so many people have tried this before. Changing the icons is my first step, as I want to get familiar with all the icon operations. Later, I will share some of my thoughts on the UI, mainly regarding the interface.
Nice work, I wanted to play around too, I know how to edit custom toolbars, but I don’t know how to edit the default toolbar in bulk. Did you change each icon from the default toolbar one by one? How do you transfer your settings to another computer? The default toolbar works differently than the others…
Ok, from what I saw Rhino saves info to XMLs only with edited objects. This seems true for both the Scheme and XML containing default RUI. So the issue is that I need to somehow force Rhino to edit all default button icons so they will show up in the XML file. After that, I can swap the SVG pieces of code with custom icons. I would rather not do it manually for every icon of course.
Oh, I did it all manually and it’s doubly tedious because of a bug. 
I congratulate you for the huge effort you put into customizing all the icons for your Rhino! 
I’m too attached to Rhino’s default icons, and therefore, I can’t switch to anything else, but works like yours are inspiring. I have several custom icons here and there, thus I know how long it takes to reach a satisfactory result. 
Nice! would you consider sharing your icons?
If I ever finish the set yes, but it’s still very incomplete and still changing.
We post problems and feedback in this forum because we want McNeel to listen to us, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t…
…so it seems they listened in this instance, and I guess some would say that I should feel flatterned (or maybe I shouldn’t feel anything at all because this is a coincidence or these colors etc are very common) however, I can’t help to think that this is just another company ripping off the creative work of one of their customers.
I don’t get if this is a joke or not, because my WIP (9) toolbars do not have those pastel colors. They have always had the same colors as Rhino 8.
It seams that this is the improved UI for v9.
To me it looks just a clown-ish version of the previous one. 
Randomly changing some icons color doesn’t give any UX improvement at the opposite it creates more confusion and worst learning path.
PLS DON’T!
A good interface relay on hierarchy, category clustering , levels of depth and much more. Colors are the last problems.
I’m begging here the taste and smartness of @Gijs 
I think you see what you want to see. If there are similarities, I guess that is purely coincidental. Inspiration was taken from G2 icons, Colors were chosen from the OpenColor system and then chosen based on how they fit together.
It’s not a random recoloring. The distinction has been made to categorize the tools to Nurbs, Mesh, SubD
Also, keep in mind, with changes like these it is best to give it some time and get used to it, and then make a judgement. Work for it for a while. Then switch back to Rhino 8, then tell us what you think.
One of the other reasons for recoloring is also a functional one: since dark mode exists, we have had light and dark mode icons, because the dark outline didn’t work in light mode and vice versa.
These icons work better with both.
