When Branding Bites

If I may unload a chip from my shoulder, I find Adobe's Creative Suite icons to be worse than useless. I get the cute factor of making them all look like periodic table cells, but it doesn't actually make sense. The periodic table is a system that expresses the periodicity of elements. The abbreviations of the element names serve the expression of chemical compounds in a compact fashion.

The icons, on the other hand are part of no system, except branding, the utility of which to the end user is virtually nonexistent. At best, these barely express the name of the particular element of software, which in itself often barely connects with the purpose of the program. At worst, you suffer the confusion that arises trying to figure out whether you wanted to click on Ai, Ae, Au, or Ps, Pr, Pl. Whose dumb idea was this?