The best option would likely be to make Suru icons for popular third party applications like Dropbox, Viber, Skype, Telegram and some others. I dont know if that infringes any copyrights, but I know that Numix icon theme for example includes Numix icons for many third party applications though Numix is not usually present on iso disc images of Linux distributions. If having third party applications icons on the iso infringes any copyrights perhaps there should be an Suru icon pack extension the users install with ubuntu-restricted-extras or a separate package? Maybe include it in installation meta-package under āDownload Third Party etcā so that users download it from the Internet during installation as opposed to including them on the iso. Or if that cant be done then I guess the easiest way is to include suru-icons-extra package or something we can install to get those Suru icons for Viber etc. It is probably impossible to cover all third party applications, but most popular ones like Dropbox, Viber, Skype, Telegram, Chrome, Opera etc should be included, there arent too many of those compared to basic icons for applications from Ubuntu repositories which are far more numerous.
Well @ads20000, Joey is entitled to his opinion.
But the fact of the matter is that third-party application icons are brands and, like it or not, itās not a software vendorās place to override branded icons. Logos like that of Firefox, etc. are copyrighted images and to modify and ship altered versions of logos would be an infringement on their copyright.
One may have the opinion that itās ājarringā but desktop Suru has been designed with the Tango/FreeDesktop icon spec in mind so that it doesnāt look completely out of place.
Hey, I did some mockups inspired by Sams icons and previous themes. If you need some help I might be able to lend a hand.
Great to hear, I was guessing that, but just to make sure 
Thanks!
Forgive me, I find the folder icons in Suru a bit " crude " going by the latest standards. I tried to pack a couple of suggestions which looks more simple and go with what we have in mind
I tried to put in a simple version, a detailed one and refined it further. Also included a cursor on look for refined variant Kindly give your suggestions
Was working on library folders
added a few plain folders into the screen shot
It seems you are more familiar with the Qt platform than any of us 
I suggest we start focusing on the GTK theme, and once we are advanced enough to not have duplicating the work or late changes again, we reach out the Kantumās author to get some help on configuring a similar look than our current theme advancement. Would you like bridging that gap on the Qt side for us?
@wfpaisa: Iāve added you to the team, great work on those teams! Do not hesitate to help where you can
There is plan for the snap team to reuse the installed system theme, as well as icons and others, so it shouldnāt collide on the long term. At worst, we do include them in the platform snap, as we do nowdays.
I started to create a FAQ btw, seeing some similar questions (and misconceptions from the press in particular) being spreaded: FAQ: Ubuntu new theme - Theme Refresh - Ubuntu Community Hub
Iāve got to secong @snwh opinion on thatā¦we should respect applicationās branding, but I think we can āadjustā it to our mission here. I donāt know if itās a viable option (Iām pretty much a begginer on Linux theming still) but we could mask the applications icons to fit the system theme, kinda like Samsung does with icon boxes on Touchwiz, or most android custom launchers are doing with adaptive icons. It is ,technologically speaking, viable to do that in Gnome?
pic from that OMG article
Most icons donāt have a colored square around their icon though?
Is there anyone (other than the Suru icon creator) who supported the switch to Suru who considered this problem?
And how was Canonical going to handle this issue (presumably they thought about this when working on Unity 8 and Suru?)
Masking is not currently possible under GNOME āthe intention of masking was there in Unity8, but that died with that project.
Canonical was going to handle it in Unity8 by making use of icon masking, which is why everything was in the squircle shape. So how it looks in that screenshot is how it will look like on the GNOME desktop, thereās no way around it aside from drawing an icon for every third party application.
And, aside from the iffy legal ground of brand infringement, keeping up with third-party icons is a never ending task, as I know from making the Moka and Paper sets āapps are constantly being made for Linux and other apps constantly update their brands or change their icon file names very frequently.
Thanks for that @snwh and I guess thatās true of a lot of icon themes.
@d0od do you have further argument? This is the future of Ubuntu weāre talking about here! 
Well, one way we could handle it is doing some research on what would be the most popular shape among third-party apps and go with that. It would make the visual gap between system and third-party less noticeable.
I think the āvisual gapā is purely a subjective criticism, since there will never not be a visual gap. What many would prefer and are asking for here is a uniform set of icons.
Iāve already started the Suru set recycling the squircle shape, the Suru colour palette and the old icon design spec and Iād rather stick to a those principles and design a good first-party desktop icon set and not worry about what other appsā icons look like alongside it. The theming community is never 100% satisfied.
What this project should be thought of as is: replacing the aging Humanity icon set, not picking a new theme.
I appreciate that, but not having a squircle in the icon set is less jarring than having one with the squircle? Humanity imho uses icons with a similar level of detail and general appearance to upstream icons. Iād really like to know what people who supported the switch (before it became official) think about this issue (because they didnāt like Humanity)ā¦
I agree. What I realized in my years of Android theming is that there is a really thin line between theme homogeneity and a boring UI.
It would be cool if we can achieve, from the adoption of the updated Suru, is a visual guideline of sorts to be a reference among third-party developers in future updates, like Material Design was before Google just ignored all the guidelines themselves.
Every developer wants its apps to ābelongā in an OS.
Iād much prefer being realistic here, a less lofty goal is simply creating (or completing in the case of Suru) a new icon set for Ubuntu desktop.
Guidelines did once exist for Ubuntu applications (once paraphrased by yours truly) when Suru was the icon set for Unity8/Ubuntu mobile, but since that endeavour is dead I suggest not being so idealistic.
Rebooted Suru is a hybrid of the original Suru icon guidelines and the Tango/FreeDesktop icon guidelines so they do not appear complete out of place on the Linux desktop.
Iām happy to help as much as I can.
Seems to me like the most correct solution would be to have an icon compositing service that could automatically produce squircle-framed versions of upstreamā¦
As a big fan of this commitment to the new icons, I donāt have a big problem with third party apps having odd icons, itās like that on the two big desktop platforms already.
Just contacted Kvantumās author, and heās more than happy to implement the Kvantum theme for the new Gtk theme.
So, if this and QGnomePlatform are used then Qt apps will look, and feel, so much better with 18.04
Actually, yes, thatās very clear on Windows 10 with most store icons vs legacy icons. Not ideal but people put up with it there.