MononoMori App New Icon

English Version

The storage management app “MononoMori” has been in development for its 2.0 update since last month.

With the Golden Week holidays, I finally had time to sit down and spend several full days refining and rebuilding different parts of the app.

Looking back at the first release, it honestly went out a little earlier than I would have liked. Most of the core features were already working properly, but there were still many areas that felt unfinished once I started using it more myself — especially the overall design, interactions, and smaller usability details.

So during this update, I decided to go through the entire app again and improve things one by one. Alongside polishing the existing features, I also added several new changes.

One of the biggest updates this time was redesigning the app icon.

The original icon was simply a tree. At the time, I mainly wanted it to reflect the “forest” feeling behind the name “Mono no Mori.” But after using it on my phone for a while, I realized it looked a bit too abstract. It didn’t immediately communicate that the app was actually for storage and item management.

For the new version, I experimented with many different ideas before settling on the current design: keeping the forest element while adding a labeled storage box in front.

I felt this kept the original atmosphere while making the app’s purpose much easier to understand at a glance.

I also redesigned the icon for dark mode this time.

Personally, I care a lot about app icons. Once people become familiar with an icon, it slowly becomes part of the product’s identity. If you change it too drastically, even if the new version looks more polished, users may feel disconnected from it.

So instead of completely replacing the old design, I wanted this update to feel more like an evolution of the original idea.

So far, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

I’d love to hear what you think about the new icons as well.