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This is late to the game, but I decided to post anyway - updating to 0.7.9 made my formerly small buttons large-size (resizing has been temporarily disabled for this version; Kovid says it will be restored), and having the new buttons such a large and prominent part of my Calibre screen brought back to my mind the thoughts about this issue I'd had when I first read this thread a few days ago.
With due respect and gratitude for the person who devoted the time and effort to creating them, I am in agreement with those posters who found the new icons inconsistent (they are a hodgepodge of different styles that don't seem to fit together as a group) and confusing (misuse of common symbols like recycling and search; symbols that don't seem to show or mean anything). Where I diverge, however, is from those who write that they'd "rather have a program that works than looks good," and comments to that effect.
I'm a huge, passionate fan and supporter of Calibre; it's probably close to my most-used piece of software, I donate, I recommend it to people all the time - I love it, use it constantly, and I'm not a nitpicker in general. But I also believe that good design isn't just aesthetics or an afterthought - it's part of good functionality and user-friendliness; it's an element of making a program that "works." That's the reason (or a big reason) we have GUIs and don't all just use command-line interface. And the more complex a piece of software, the more important design becomes.
And symbols, icons, are about more than just appearance; they serve as a means of communication - think about the octagonal red stop sign, and what it means around much of the world; the words on it are almost irrelevant. Using something like the recycling symbol to mean something entirely different than what people expect serves only to confuse people - sure they can read the text beneath, but that undermines the whole purpose of using a symbol to begin with; in that case, why not eliminate the symbol and simply use text. Given all the possibilities out there, it's simply unnecessary to use a symbol that already has a widely-accepted meaning attached - that is bad communication and therefore, bad design. I don't believe that's subjective at all - it's not a matter of what is pleasing to an individual's eye.
Similarly, consistency isn't (or is only marginally) subjective. Giving a website or an application a consistent, identifiable "look and feel" - whether that's a set of colors or color-groups, or a set of shapes, or something else that binds the icons and other elements of the interface together - contributes to user-friendliness and ease of navigation and accessibility. It doesn't matter as much whether the icons are "pretty" or "attractive" to any individual - arguably, that is more subjective - but whether they match each other and the rest of the design. Whether they communicate effectively.
Again, I think these factors are important elements of whether and how well an application "works," and they become more so a) the more complex and sophisticated the application becomes; and b) the more people (and the more un-technologically-sophisticated people) use the application.
Of course, I'm not a graphic designer, so I'm not able to put my money where my mouth is - I wish I could, because I surely would. But I think an application of the level Calibre has reached deserves a design - or at least a set of icons - that is consistent with its sophistication and complexity. True, it is not the role of the software developers to do this - but I can't help but think that among all the dedicated Calibre users must be someone with the skills and willingness to produce a set of icons that better reflect Calibre's remarkable level of...well, sophistication, and complexity, and, yes professionalism.
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