The text actually *is* too small to use it that way.
That is why most icons come in different varieties at different sizes, adapting to each resolution at low dimensions. (16px 24px 32px ...)

Concerning your pdf icon I don't just see the text as problematic, but also the curved lines.
While you can choose to just discard the text at low resolutions the curves almost get sucked up during the scaling process.

My hint would be:
large sizes - leave as it is
medium sizes - remove the text
small sizes - remove text and add extra thickness to the curved lines (maybe even widen the loops a bit to retain the characteristic of the curves)

maybe Tango project has some more information you're interested in:
http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project


Robert


On 28/01/13 13:55, Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild wrote:
Hey,

For some time I have considered advocating for the adoption of
<http://test.pdfreaders.org/graphics/pdfreaders-f.svg> as the MIME
type icon for PDF files on systems where a free PDF reader is present.
However, several people I have told about this idea have told me that
the text "PDF" is too small to be of use. Thus, I could welcome some
help from the Designers team.

If you would be so kind to help me out, please take a look at the
attached screenshots (screen1.png is the default size on my Arch Linux
+ XFCE + Thunar system, probably 16x16 icon). Is the text "PDF" too
small? Would you recommend going with it anyway? If not, could you
please alter the linked SVG and produce an icon more suitable for the
proposed use case while maintaining maximum resemblance to the current
one? Please note that if a modified icon is adopted then we will most
likely allow anyone to use it without no usage restrictions to
identify PDF documents.

Thank you for your input.


P.S. Do not drop me from the to-line. I am not subscribed to the list.

Cheers,



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