Icons, pictograms, or glorified rebuses?

I was talking with a friend about the definition of icons the other day, sparked by this blog post from Khoi Vinh. In this short post, Khoi shows his dissatisfaction with the way icon design has gone.

… the majority of commonly accepted and commercially functional icons in use today are visually literal — they represent objects or combinations of objects, even if they are intended to stand in for abstract concepts — and they’re almost exclusively dimensional.

By contrast, I like incredibly abstract and minimal graphical elements. For me, a simple, one-pixel straight line is practically a revival of the Rococo style. If I had my way, the only pictorial components of my design work would be the pictures: photographs or illustrations. Everything else would be simple and elementally native to the browser, or whatever other rendering mechanism I’m working with. Which is to say, you’d only ever see lines and boxes — and flat ones at that. No shading, please, and no three-dimensional modeling.

While this notion isn’t new, and the post isn’t new either, the ball really got rolling when I was overtalking it. I think everybody has a notion of what an icon is; a representation or pictogram to represent a certain feature or object of the software world. This could be an application, opening a new tab in your browser, or a folder on your hard drive.

In today’s world of the OS X Aqua and Vista aesthetic, this means giving icons a close-to-real-life (dimensional) appearance to conform to platform style. I can’t see how goblets of glossy liquid in the interface fit into this, but it’s clear the icons long since have headed to the photorealistic appearance we got accustomed to. However, this notion is countered the pictograms in the signage we all know from subways, airports, and other major public places, which Khoi advocates in his post. This offers the question of my blog post; “have we swerved too far from traditional pictograms to really define the (particularly, application) icons we use today as ‘icons’?”

Continue reading Icons, pictograms, or glorified rebuses?…

My icon is bigger than yours.

Since my office walls are awfully empty, I decided to design one of my favorite Mac OS X icons by Apple at 2 by 2 meters. Although the Photoshop file got awfully big (the original is rendered, but I redid it in Photoshop), it works pretty well as a wallpaper. Making it took about a day and a half (I haven’t worked on it ‘full-time’, as I’ve got client work too) I’ll post new pictures in this post next Tuesday when I expect the print to be put up in the office.

For now, check out the wallpaper version preview at Flickr.

Yummy February.

Feast your eyes on some icons yet to come. I’m almost literally breaking my teeth on adding details and perfecting a new icon aesthetic. More updates on several interesting February developments soon (before the end of the month).

The Origin of the Inimitable Icons.

I got some astonishing material in my hands today. It’s Apple’s material, and it is quite old - but I can assure you that the images are no less revealing and eye-opening. What I can’t figure out, for the life of me, is why Apple did not include this in the latest incarnation of their Human Interface Guidelines, as it is probably the best insight into the design of Aqua icons ever. Get a glimpse of the inception of Aqua inside.

Continue reading The Origin of the Inimitable Icons….

Making a Picturesque Icon.

I was contacted by Acqualia - the creators of the Apple Design Award-winning application Picturesque - to design a new icon. Picturesque, an application I already use on my blog, is stunningly simple in its purpose and product; it beautifies images, but not in the typical Core Image-filter like fashion you see most of the time. The true power is the simplicity; there’s no ugly distorting filters to get in your way, but a few tools catered to your needs which provide instant satisfaction.

Read on for the inside process in this ‘Making the Icon’ post.

Continue reading Making a Picturesque Icon….

A final teaser of things to come.

As the holidays are approaching, I have decided that I am better off spending a few days not working in the year and taking the time to perfect my icons and the details in them. I will be blogging a bit less, and I probably won’t release much, if anything in the rest of 2007. But January 2008 will certainly be the date of the extended Orion iconset, and another set that I am working on in my spare time. I decided to show that off to whet your appetite for the holidays and the new year. Work in progress!

Apart from a good system-replacement set, I will release a set of icons in a theme of my first portfolio website; the ‘forgotten mainframe’; overgrown electronics from damp rainforests on alien worlds. I don’t want to make the same mistake as I did with Orion, so sound off in the comments if there is any motivation for this to be a system set instead of just a small icon set.

Orion: the Aftermath

My, what a few insane days it has been. Orion hit the Apple website, while also being linked from other major sites like the Iconfactory. At the moment of writing, Orion just exceeded a grand total of 300 GB in downloads, with well over 150,000 new visitors on my websites. Actually, it’s the fourth most downloaded thing on Apple.com, just under iTunes, Quicktime, and Safari.

I got a lot of email asking how to use the icons, and I gladly replied; Kupuk’s great tutorial of the ‘good ol’ manual way’, and Panic’s awesome Candybar 3. Of course, your downloads are flattening and the kind emails and comments have been very encouraging. Work on the extended set of Orion, with all system replacements for Mac, Windows, and Linux, along with several creative new folder motifs, has commenced already. I will push out a new volume with a complete system replacement icons, and a dock for OS X, late in December or in January. What’s that? A sneak peek? Okay, one of the ‘fantasy’ microsets in the extended Orion is… a ’sci-fi’ themed, highly detailed EVE Online architecture set.

Permission from CCP Games pending.

What is most important in all of this, is your feedback. You want more folders? What kind of folders? Your vote counts! As the cumulative comments of this blog are reaching 500 fast, there is chance that your comment will be the 500th - which means prizes, baby!

Drop your requests in this post’s comments and have a fair chance of winning a full license for Noble, my stock icon set, and a single folder icon request for the upcoming extended Orion iconset that will be fulfilled - guaranteed!. Of course, comments on all posts are eligible - be sure to use your actual email address.

Leopard: Customization heaven.

From the same source as the stack drawers, I found that a new little application had been released that turns Leopard into the premiere point release of OS X when it comes to desktop customization. Susumu Yoshida, a talented icon designer, released his very elaborate set of brightly colored and nicely textured stack drawers, which I tested during the last week and thoroughly enjoyed. See this desktop screenshot;

Click for original and fullsize at Flickr.

I found that a software company, CocoaMug, has put together a tool to customize every aspect of your dock. It’s called Palette, and costs a mere $6.90 for a full license. It doesn’t just allow you to choose a color for the background of your 3D dock, but it also allows you to set these beautiful ‘drawer’ icons for individual stacks - making using stack drawers as simple as drag and drop. Click here for an impressive video demo on Susumu’s blog. Thanks for sharing, Susumu!

Orion set sheet preview.

Click for full size at flickr.

For those of you holding out on Orion (for whatever reason) or those that are curious, I compiled a sheet with Orion’s icons at all special sizes. Of course, you can find the (high-resolution 512 pixel) icons in the icon set itself.

New freeware iconset release: Orion.

( Go to icon set directly)

For the last month, I have been working on a freeware icon set to supersede all my older work. I was interested in how much I could learn by attracting critique from the most valued artists and criticasters I have in my buddy lists and address book, and I took it all to the heart. I decided to make a folder set that would find the middle ground between the flat front-on perspective of Mac OS X Leopard and the old, spatial perspective of folders in Tiger.

Continue reading New freeware iconset release: Orion….