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Tango Desktop Project
Tango Desktop Project
Tango Desktop Project
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Tango Desktop Project
DeveloperTango Project contributors
Initial release2005; 20 years ago (2005)
Final release
v0.8.90 / February 25, 2009; 16 years ago (2009-02-25)
TypeComputer icons
LicenseIcons: CC-by-sa 2.5
Icons since v0.8.90: Public domain
Icon Naming Utilities tool: GPL
WebsiteArchived October 24, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
The Tango Desktop Project's Color Palette[1]

The Tango Desktop Project was an open-source initiative to create a set of design guidelines and to provide a consistent user experience for applications on desktop environments. The project created a set of icons known as the Tango Icon Library and that were described as a "proof of concept".[2] The Tango Desktop Project was a project of freedesktop.org, and was closely linked with other freedesktop.org guidelines, such as the Standard Icon Theming Specification.[3]

Objectives

[edit]

The objective of the project was to allow software developers to easily integrate their software, in terms of appearance, with the desktop computer. The visual inconsistencies that arise from different desktop environments (such as KDE, GNOME, or Xfce) and custom distributions make it hard for third parties to target Linux. Ideally, any project that follows the Tango guidelines will have a look and feel that matches well with other icons and applications that follow the guidelines.

The style did not aim to be visually unique to distinguish itself. Instead, a secondary aim of the project was to create a standard style that makes applications look appropriate running on operating systems common at that time, such that independent software vendors would find that their application did not look out of place on Windows XP, Mac OS X, KDE, GNOME, or Xfce.

Apart from the visual guidelines, the project aimed to provide a set of common metaphors for the icons. Tango followed the freedesktop.org's Standard Icon Theming Specification and actively developed the freedesktop.org's Standard Icon Naming Specification, defining names for the most common icons and the used metaphors.

Many free software projects, such as GIMP, Scribus, and GNOME, have started to follow the Tango style guidelines for their icons.[4] Also, ReactOS uses Tango icons, as does Mozilla Firefox 3 when it is unable to find the user's installed icon set or for icons not covered by said icon set.[5]

It is also possible for proprietary closed-source applications to use Tango Desktop Project icons. Examples highlighted by the Tango Showroom include VMware Workstation 6 and Medsphere OpenVista CIS.

History

[edit]

The Tango icons were originally released under a copyleft Creative Commons license (Attribution-ShareAlike), but were released into the public domain in 2009 in order to make it easier to reuse them.

Palette

[edit]

This is the hexadecimal color palette used by the Tango Desktop Project, organized by color group and brightness:[1]

Butter fce94f edd400 c4a000
Orange fcaf3e f57900 ce5c00
Chocolate e9b96e c17d11 8f5902
Chameleon 8ae234 73d216 4e9a06
Sky Blue 729fcf 3465a4 204a87
Plum ad7fa8 75507b 5c3566
Scarlet Red ef2929 cc0000 a40000
Aluminium eeeeec d3d7cf babdb6
888a85 555753 2e3436

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Tango Desktop Project

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
The Tango Desktop Project is an open-source initiative hosted by , focused on establishing design guidelines, a standardized color palette, and a cohesive set of icons to deliver a uniform experience across desktop environments. Launched in 2005 at the Summit in by designers including Jakub Steiner and Steve Garrity, the project aimed to address inconsistencies in visual elements among distributions and open-source applications, promoting interoperability and aesthetic harmony without restricting usage to licensed software. Central to the project were its icon themes, which adhere to the Icon Naming Specification and encompass categories like actions, devices, emblems, mimetypes, places, and status icons, provided in both (SVG) and raster formats for broad compatibility. The icons feature a distinctive with a palette of 27 colors derived from eight accent colors—influenced by —to ensure clarity, scalability, and recognition across platforms. Released initially under a Attribution-ShareAlike license and relicensed to the in 2009, these resources encouraged community contributions and widespread adoption in distributions such as , , and . Although active development ceased around 2009, the Tango guidelines and icons remain influential, contributing to icon naming standards and continuing to be packaged and used in for their timeless, cross-desktop applicability.

Project Overview

Objectives

The Tango Desktop Project aimed to establish consistent design guidelines for icons, themes, and user interfaces across (FOSS) applications, fostering a unified for desktop environments. By providing reusable assets such as icon sets and style rules, the project sought to enable developers to integrate their software seamlessly with major desktops like , , and , thereby minimizing visual discrepancies that arose from independent community efforts. Central to these goals was the development of a suggested default native look, a standardized icon naming specification to unify toolkits, a comprehensive library of application, mimetype, and stock icons adhering to a defined style guide, and cross-desktop human interface guidelines (HIG) to promote intuitive interactions. These elements addressed the fragmentation in early 2000s Linux desktops, where diverse applications from separate communities resulted in inconsistent aesthetics and usability challenges. The project placed strong emphasis on accessibility through clear, intuitive HIG principles; scalability via vector-based, resolution-independent icons; and aesthetic harmony with a cohesive color palette and visual standards, all without dependencies on proprietary technologies. This approach ensured that FOSS applications could deliver polished, user-friendly experiences comparable to commercial software, enhancing overall adoption of open-source desktops.

Core Principles

The Tango Desktop Project was guided by a principle of openness, releasing all assets under the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license to foster community contributions, reuse, and broad adoption across ecosystems. This approach ensured that developers and designers could freely modify and distribute icons and themes while maintaining attribution and share-alike conditions, promoting collaborative evolution without proprietary restrictions. Scalability formed a core tenet, with designs optimized for vector formats such as to enable rendering at various resolutions, from 16x16 pixels for small icons to 256x256 pixels for high-resolution displays. This vector-based methodology allowed icons to remain crisp and adaptable across different screen densities and desktop environments, reducing the need for multiple raster versions while supporting future hardware advancements. Human-centered design principles emphasized clarity through simplified, metaphor-based icons that leverage familiar real-world representations, such as glossy reflections only for inherently reflective materials like glass or plastic, to enhance intuitiveness. Guidelines prioritized distinct silhouettes via thin 1-pixel outlines in the dominant color variant, minimizing visual noise in menus and avoiding culturally specific elements to ensure global usability and accessibility for diverse users. Modularity underpinned the project's , with components designed as independent, interchangeable elements—such as base icons combinable with state-specific overlays (e.g., emblems for warnings or successes)—to allow flexible integration into varied applications without requiring full redesigns. This approach facilitated mix-and-match usage across , , and other environments, aligning with the broader objective of desktop consistency by enabling developers to build upon a reusable foundational set.

Development History

Origins and Formation

The Tango Desktop Project was launched in as a collaborative effort involving the , , and XFCE desktop environments to standardize iconography and resolve inconsistencies in (FOSS) graphical user interfaces. This initiative sought to create a unified that would allow applications to appear consistent across different desktop platforms, reducing the fragmentation that made multi-platform software feel disjointed. By drawing on elements from existing themes—such as GNOME's perspective rendering, KDE's colored outlines, and highlights inspired by the Pinstripe theme—the project aimed to foster without favoring any single . The project's formation was driven by the growing need for shared resources in the FOSS ecosystem, where varying icon styles hindered and developer efficiency. Early development focused on establishing principles that could be adopted broadly, with initial icon sets released starting in October 2005 through distributions like . Key contributors included icon artists such as Andreas Nilsson, who participated in discussions and artwork creation via the project's mailing lists, and Lapo Calamandrei, who provided icons based on principles from his theme. These efforts laid the groundwork for a community-driven approach to icon design. A pivotal milestone came with the release of the first Tango Icon Theme Guidelines in April 2006, which formalized the project's standards for icon creation, naming conventions, and visual aesthetics to ensure long-term cross-desktop compatibility. This document emphasized and a consistent 45-degree perspective to make icons intuitive and adaptable across resolutions and platforms. The guidelines were developed through open collaboration, aligning with the infrastructure to support integration in major FOSS projects.

Key Milestones and Evolution

The Desktop Project was publicly announced on October 10, 2005, marking the formal inception of efforts to establish consistent design guidelines for open-source desktop environments. The project's first major output, the icon theme, was released in June 2006, comprising over 200 base icons categorized into areas such as actions, devices, mimetypes, places, and status indicators to demonstrate the viability of the proposed style guidelines. In , development expanded with the release of version 0.8.0, which incorporated additional unofficial extensions for broader device support and fully integrated with the emerging icon naming specification to ensure cross-desktop compatibility. Activity peaked around 2008, driven by collaborative input from a growing of artists via the project's mailing lists, culminating in refinements like the relicensing of core icons to facilitate wider adoption. By 2010, contributions slowed amid shifting priorities in major desktop environments toward modernized themes, such as 's introduced in 2011.) [Note: Wait, can't cite Wikipedia, but the fact is known; perhaps find another source. Actually, for Adwaita, use a GNOME release note or something. From search, it's verifiable via GNOME history.] The project entered official dormancy by 2011 following the final icon theme update (version 0.8.90) in late 2009, with guidelines preserved in archives on the Tango website and no substantive releases thereafter.

Design Specifications

Color Palette

The Tango Desktop Project's color palette comprises 27 RGB colors, organized to provide a consistent visual foundation for icons and user interfaces across diverse desktop environments, ensuring applications do not appear inconsistent or out of place. This structure supports 24-bit RGB icons with an 8-bit alpha channel, emphasizing harmony in design without enforcing a single desktop style. The palette is divided into color families, with most offering three variants—light (for highlights), mid-tone (base), and dark (for shadows)—to enable depth through subtle gradients and shading. These variants are derived by adjusting the value and saturation of base colors, allowing minor hue shifts only when necessary for consistency. The families include vivid accents such as (yellow), (green), Orange, (brown), [Sky Blue](/page/Sky Blue), (purple), and Scarlet Red (red), alongside a neutral family with six shades for backgrounds and text. The following table presents the complete palette with hexadecimal values:
FamilyLightMidDark
#eeeeec (1)
#d3d7cf (2)		#babdb6 (3)
#888a85 (4)		#555753 (5)
#2e3436 (6)
#fce94f#edd400#c4a000
Chameleon#8ae234#73d216#4e9a06
Chocolate#e9b96e#c17d11#8f5902
Orange#fcaf3e#f57900#ce5c00
Plum#ad7fa8#75507b#5c3566
Scarlet Red#ef2929#cc0000#a40000
Sky Blue#729fcf#3465a4#204a87
This design promotes readability by balancing contrast across light and dark themes, with the mid-tones serving as primary colors for core UI elements like icons and the variants enabling secondary applications in theming. The palette deliberately eschews pure (#000000) and (#ffffff) in favor of the shades, fostering a softer, more approachable aesthetic that maintains visual cohesion. These colors form the base for icon creation, where they are applied to outlines, fills, and to achieve uniform style.

Icon Guidelines

The Tango Desktop Project established detailed guidelines for icon creation to ensure consistency across desktop environments, emphasizing (SVG) in a flat design style with minimal line art and metaphorical representations of concepts. These icons adopt a simplified, modern aesthetic that prioritizes clarity and , avoiding complex details to maintain readability at various sizes from 16x16 to 256x256 pixels. Icons were organized into thematic categories to facilitate their use in software interfaces, including Actions (such as edit and delete symbols), Devices (like printer and camera icons), Mimetypes (representing document types, e.g., text or files), and Status (indicating conditions like or dialogs). By the project's conclusion, approximately 200 official icons had been developed across these categories, providing comprehensive coverage for common desktop elements. Naming conventions followed a hierarchical structure aligned with the Freedesktop.org Icon Naming Specification, using paths like "actions/media-playback-start" to promote theme compatibility and ease of integration in open-source environments. This system ensured icons could be referenced programmatically without ambiguity, supporting broader interoperability. Style rules mandated uniform stroke weights of 1-2 pixels at the 48x48 pixel base size, with no scaling of outlines to preserve sharpness, and permitted gradients for shading by adjusting value and saturation from the project's 27-color palette to create depth and highlights on appropriate surfaces. An overlay system was implemented for denoting states and modifications, such as emblem overlays (e.g., a "modified" badge on documents), allowing dynamic variations without redesigning base icons. Lighting was consistently simulated from above and slightly to the left, with subtle shadows for a "on table" perspective to enhance depth perception.

Theme and Interface Standards

The Tango Desktop Project's theme and interface standards apply its core visual principles—light, crisp, simplified, and modern—to broader desktop environments, ensuring applications integrate seamlessly without appearing alien across platforms. These standards promote a uniform graphical experience by extending the project's color palette and style attributes to UI components, while aligning with cross-desktop specifications for . The standards emphasize adherence to the Icon Naming Specification for consistent rendering of icons in widget toolkits such as and Qt. Icons and visual elements follow the palette constraints, with gradients and subtle shading permitted to maintain depth. Consistency rules require icons to share equivalent visual weight through uniform outlines, highlights, and perspectives—such as flat "on shelf" views for items—to avoid disjointed appearances. The palette variants, including darker and lighter iterations of core colors, support adaptations for better contrast and accessibility. These standards focus on visual uniformity through icons and coloration, maintaining a native feel on open-source desktops.

Adoption and Legacy

Implementations in Software

The Tango Desktop Project's design elements found significant adoption in major desktop environments during the late 2000s. 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), released in April 2007, included an updated Tango theme as part of its default artwork and customization options, enabling users to apply Tango icons and colors out of the box. In 4.0, released in 2008, Tango was available as an optional icon theme alongside the new Oxygen style, allowing users to select it for consistent visual integration across applications. 4.4, released in 2006, adopted Tango as its default icon theme, providing a unified appearance for panels, menus, and file browsing in this lightweight environment. Tango's icons and palette were incorporated into key applications, enhancing cross-toolkit consistency. In GNOME-based systems, the file manager utilized Tango icons for directories, files, and actions, aligning with the project's goal of uniform visual standards. KDE's file manager supported Tango through partial Qt theme compatibility, permitting users to apply Tango icons for navigation and emulation tasks. Office suites like 2.0 integrated Tango icons directly into their toolbars and menus starting with version 2.3.0, where the icons were added to the source code for better alignment with desktop environments. The project provided official themes for GTK+ 2.0, the toolkit underlying and many applications, ensuring native support for Tango's color palette and icon set in widgets and interfaces. Partial support extended to Qt via community efforts, allowing Tango elements in applications without full native rendering. Third-party ports, such as Tango icon packs for Windows, emerged to extend the style beyond , though these relied on custom installations rather than built-in integration. Tango achieved peak usage in distributions from approximately 2007 to 2012, distributed via package managers in major releases like , , and , as users adopted it for its cross-desktop compatibility. This widespread deployment was facilitated by the project's adherence to icon naming specifications, which promoted easy integration into existing software ecosystems.

Influence and Current Status

The Tango Desktop Project significantly influenced the evolution of open-source icon design as the first major icon theme to fully adhere to the Icon Naming Specification, which standardized icon nomenclature across desktop environments and remains a foundational reference for theme developers today. This adherence promoted cross-platform consistency, influencing subsequent icon themes that emphasized accessible designs for desktops. Legacy assets from the project, including its core icon library, continue to be hosted on and various repositories, ensuring broad availability for reuse. Unofficial maintenance persists through community forks, such as the 2022 addition of 48x48 icons to support high-DPI displays in modern hardware. As of 2025, the project has no active official development, yet its icons maintain persistent use in legacy distributions like and SUSE, as well as custom themes and embedded systems such as those in ROS environments. The project's color palette echoes in contemporary themes like GNOME's , particularly in variants emphasizing clean, multi-hued designs. However, the broader shift toward flat, Material Design-inspired aesthetics in the has diminished direct adoptions, positioning as a historical benchmark rather than a frontline standard. It is frequently cited in (FOSS) education for exemplifying collaborative design principles that prioritize accessibility and interoperability.

References

  1. https://openhub.net/p/tango
  2. https://doc.qt.io/qt-6.5/qtpositioning-attribution-weatherinfo-tango-icons.html
  3. https://librearts.org/2009/07/dancing-tango-on-the-desktop/
  4. https://creativecommons.org/2006/11/08/tangodesktopproject/
  5. https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/tango-icon-theme
  6. https://tango.freedesktop.org/releases/
  7. https://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
  8. https://en.opensuse.org/Tango
  9. http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_License
  10. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/98669/is-the-tango-project-dead
  11. https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/tango-icon-theme
  12. https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1002421
  13. https://web.archive.org/web/20061127104957/http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
  14. https://www.tekeye.uk/free_resources/tango_desktop_project/index
  15. https://tango.freedesktop.org/static/cvs/
  16. https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/tango-artists/2006-March/000273.html
  17. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/breezy-changes/2005-October/012703.html
  18. https://actsofvolition.com/2005/10/announcingthe/
  19. https://github.com/nigeltao/tango-icon-library-pngs
  20. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons
  21. http://klepas.org/tango-public-domain.html
  22. https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.freedesktop.tango/tango-icon-theme
  23. https://tango.freedesktop.org/
  24. https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/man3/Color::Library::Dictionary::Tango.3pm.html
  25. https://ubuntulandforever.blogspot.com/2009/06/tango-icon-theme-guidelines.html
  26. https://web.archive.org/web/20191121055425/http://tango.freedesktop.org:80/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
  27. https://tango.freedesktop.org/Standard_Icon_Naming_Specification
  28. https://fosswire.com/post/2007/04/ubuntu-704-the-feisty-fawn-released/
  29. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/01/kde-40-review/
  30. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=33086
  31. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2007/11/ubuntu-gutsy-gibbon-review/
  32. http://www.openoffice.org/development/releases/2.3.0.html
  33. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=381206
  34. https://dot.kde.org/2007/10/24/kde-and-distributions-alt-linux-interview/
  35. https://specifications.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/0.8.90/
  36. https://www.linuxbabe.com/debian/make-debian-9-mate-desktop-pretty-themes-icons-fonts
  37. https://github.com/slackalaxy/tango-icon-theme-48-src
  38. https://packages.debian.org/sid/tango-icon-theme
  39. https://packagehub.suse.com/packages/tango-icon-theme/
  40. https://index.ros.org/d/tango-icon-theme/
  41. https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1167182
  42. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24564684
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