I don't know, I can understand the icons honestly, the THM symbol with a stick under it clearly means 2-handed THM weapons etc. The materia icons are easy to understand as long as you know the class symbols (which are probably the more confusing of the batch IF anything.)

Since a pants icon clearly means melded to pants and so on. I agree though, this whole icon only stuff is getting a bit overboard in new MMOs and prorgams, I am old fashioned too, which is why I adore the FF UI of old.