Colour Me Subtle

Here's the segmented control section from iMovie '09.

Bit of a surprise — I'd not noticed the subtle colouring of two of the icons before. 

Comments

[Lorenz Cuno Klopfenstein]

Is it just me, or is the (subtly) red colored "delete" icon misaligned (one or two pixels above the star icons)?

[Keith Lang]

Well spotted Lorenz.

Seem the X is 1 pixel too high… and the key icon is 1 pixel too low. All other icons(not pictured) are on the same baseline.
http://skitch.com/keith/nhn34/icon-alignment

[daos]

interesting. ive often seen designers (digital and print) pixel pushing to a most ridiculous degree to get everything aligned. unfortunately that doesn't always result in visual balance. the eye/brain isn't counting pixels, it's looking at the context. so if something looks right, it is. even though mathematically it may be wrong. the same applies to alignment of letterforms which is also why rounded characters extend above and below the alignment of the angular characters.

agree about the X icon being too high, but so is the information icon at the end. key looks fine though it may be numerically innaccurate.

and the original subject of this post – the colours – so subtle as to be redundant? or just visible enough to work subliminally?

[Keith Lang]

@daos

Good points. I don't know how subtle something can be before it simple stops working.