From the experience I have had with clients and input I had on the blog, I get the feeling people are starting to get frustrated with the notion that globes equal the internet. A while back I was chatting with someone in the late hours and he pointed out that icons in general are taking a turn for more conceptual graphics, deviating from the ‘norm’ – that is, the pre-established metaphorical conventions like globes representing internet, documents with a pen representing document-based applications, or a metallic rounded rectangle with a screen on it for single-window applications. There are a lot of exceptions to the conventions; some icons, as someone pointed out in the comments of my article on designing the Flow icon, just jump out of the convention without clashing with the aesthetics of the OS.
These are three examples of sound icons that have everything to do with the internet and, praise the heavens, feature no globe. If Craig Hockenberry’s article is anywhere near complete, the Icon Factory hasn’t even considered icon designs with globes for Coda (rather, a forklift, which I thought was a very nice concept). The Safari icon, as an additional example, has what you could consider a map of sorts reminiscent of a globe but I can’t say the strong metaphor in the icon is a globe. The point that I am getting here is that a globe is a visual convention for anything having to do with either network or internet (which, themselves, are closely semantically tied). Conventions have the advantage of being good for end-users; we once decided on making the Delete symbol in toolbars resemble a “No Smoking” sign without the cigarette in the interface, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, but these days, people expect it to be there – that, or you have to use another convention like a trash bucket.
In icons, it is worth separating the toolbar and application icons for obvious reasons. In the light of this article, they are distinctly different as well; application icons tend to benefit of innovation rather than convention, using either adaptations of conventions or none at all, whereas toolbar icons often strive to conform to all conventions, but still having an own style; be it in colors or slight stylistic adjustments – one could compare them to pictograms, being purely symbolic for functions. This increase of visual innovation in application icons has been quite steady and lately, even more unique icons have followed one another in the fight for your attention and curiosity. As we see this trend increasing, and more applications geared towards the same purpose come out for the Mac, it will become a lot harder for designers to come up with clever new metaphors. It’s only logical to assume that today’s innovations could be tomorrow’s conventions. Ideas, like any resource, are limited.
Perhaps the trend we are seeing is caused by developers and developing companies in general getting the concept that you cannot sell something without marketing it. Making your product stand out from the crowd is essential in the exponentially expanding software market for the Mac. Stock icons for applications (example; toolbar icons) are sold less and less because many a developer is glad to pay for an icon designer making it as beautiful as it can be. Developers really love their products, and most importantly; they want users, as it often means money or exposure. Now, I am sure Disco hasn’t gotten so popular due to its great icon design – however, it would have been a lot less popular with a bad icon. Also, people who don’t know Disco (i.e. cavedwellers) can get the idea that it is an edgy, new and innovative application from the icon conveying those messages. Look at it this way, and you can see how icon design matters, even with the greatest marketing campaigns.
It’s true; more innovating applications re-inventing the wheel but “doing it right™” means reinvented icons. Personally, regardless of the degree of innovation in the application, in my process with clients I aim for a great multitude of ideas and push for finding new metaphors and clever connections to use in an icon. In no way, however, do I stand in the way of using conventions in an icon if the client, or even me, desires it. But I must admit, globes get me itching a bit by now when it comes to application icons. Are you as curious as I am about tomorrow’s visual conventions?
No, it’s not gone that far that I have pushed 944 icons so far. Perhaps I have, I don’t know, but that’s beside the point. What matters is the future. The time after 9:44 UTC.
Having gotten enthusiastic responses to the Iconizement plan I set forward in a few posts, I have been able to get ‘sponsoring’ for at least two icon sets. I have a whole road ahead of me when it comes to the freeware icon sets I am producing.
This is, basically, the timeline for my upcoming icon sets. The three in the ‘hot zone’ above (the Designer Icons set 2, the War on Bad Design icons set 2 and the Designer Folders) are coming up very quickly, very possibly at the same time, when the brand new version of Icon Designer will be unveiled.
But there is more, a lot more. 944, the enigmatic number, stands for 512, 256, 128, 32, and 16; the new sizes that I will be releasing my icons in. You read that right, all new icon sets will feature super-hi res icons a month before Leopard. If anyone’s even been ready for Leopard, I am.
Apart from that, not only Mac users will rejoice. Icon Designer’s new releases come in all formats; for Windows in .ico, for Mac in ICNS, and for Linux users, PNG’s for all sizes. The growing popularity of this website has shown me that there is a righteous demand for these extra formats, and as such, you are getting them!
This wouldn’t be the Cocoia Blog if you would get out of this blog post without being peppered by desire-inducing preview images. The Designer Folders set, which will contain anodized metal, standard aqua and wooden folders with the following interesting motives;
Slight touches of reflection in the anodized steel folders (which are depicted here) are among the fine details in the new sets. The folder set is truly a showcase of new, unique ideas in folders and overflows with gimmicks and eye candy. Since there was a lot of ado going on at Macthemes over Susumu’s latest folder set release “Cats 2” being ‘inspired’ by other sets, I set to inspire this set by cats as well. In fact, since they have always been so supportive in my life, I included a cat – he’s not so comfortable in folders, though, or so it seems.
I wanted to put a solid date on this release, and although it is highly dependent on my picky sense of perfectionism, I expect to launch Icon Designer v. 3 by the beginning of September – ideally, the last day of August. I will keep you up to date with the developments!
Tomorrow will see a wild announcement. No, really, something all of you will really, really, really like. Stay tuned, subscribers, leechers and readers alike.
944
‘Tis late, but it’s been quite a day.
Noble has gone on sale, finally, and this gorgeous 128-to -16 pixel sized icon set has quite a lot in (icon) store. As you can read on the website, various icons have been included for specific Leopard features, modern devices and in the tradition of Cocoia, requests will be honoured like the ones that will be announced with this conclusion of the contest that will give away four licenses of this great cornucopia of icons. The Noble Add-on set that will follow out of this will be free for the contest winners and all other license holders!
Contest Winner 1: Kyle Nilson
Nobody came close to Kyle’s excellent suggestion in terms of both originality and feasability;
(…)
One of the most under-catered fields in GUI is biology and the hard sciences in general. A great deal of developers homebrew apps to calculate annealing temperatures, enzyme digests, chemical compounds, and other technical mixes. In addition, one must often use small simple apps to program various tools to work properly, such as mixer tables, PCR machines, centrifuges, microscopy packages, and ultraviolet photoboxes.
All of these apps are simple to use if one knows where to click and what to do, but easy to use GUIs are rare. Very few scientists are effective at icon creation or design. If quality, royalty free icons existed for biology, chemistry, and physics, a great deal of apps would be improved and become easy to use, a great benefit for incoming students and up and coming researchers.
Various icons are needed for DNA, RNA, timers, enzymes, temperatures (both metric and imperial), forces, compounds, master mixes, and many other thoughts, ideas, and processes in the scientific world. (…)
It sure did, Kyle!
Contest Winners 2, 3, and 4; ;
Nicholas Brawn suggested a console / terminal icon, a (network) activity icon, and something that represents logs or log viewing. An excellent suggestion.
Leif Singer had a fantastic list of suggestions like Operation.Success, Operation.warning, User.login / User.logout, Clipboard.copy and Clipboard.paste, Document.print, Sort.descending and ascending and Document.SaveAs. Fantastic all around.
Last but not least, Zac Cohan offered suggestions for website functions like Home, Support, Downloads, Help documentation, user login, and various navigational elements. Thanks for the tip, Zac!
I hope the winners enjoy their licenses a lot and starting now, you’ll be able to support my endeavour for freeware icons and ad-less websites by buying yourself a set – it’s a lifetime of use and great karma. Good night, everyone!
Ahh, the contest! The response was quite nice. I have discarded 13 submissions today because they really, really weren’t (wherever you live) within the deadline. A neat 142 submissions remain. I have, honestly, already sorted them and I think I have my winners. The website will be up August 7th, as will the blog post with the winning suggestions and I’ll be sure to send out the packs on that date as well. Thanks, everyone, for the numerous input and perhaps until another contest.
I talked about Iconizements in another post, they basically entail small targeted ‘advertising’ on freeware icons. You ‘donate’ a given amount of money as, say, “Company X”, and the next icon set would be (example!) “Company X Potato Icons”, featuring amongst things a potato grater with Company X’s logo embossed in it. Since I want to introduce people to it, I want a few developing companies / individuals willing to give it a try. In this case, your donation is voluntary and there will be some small icon sets featuring the specifications I outlined above. To summarize: Get a bit of free advertising! Yup, right here, on my icons. Why don’t you drop me an email?
And be sure to get rid of those nasty _()_ signs in my email address. ‘Tis to fight the bots.
I have been meaning to make this post since a month now and I never did. It’s been sitting around in a drafts folder, with me making changes every few days but never large additions. Now I am committing myself to finishing it.
Cocoia has become my full time occupation. Although we know vacation months in the Netherlands, I can assure you I have none. Earning my living through the design that I do has been satisfying, exciting, dangerous, and fun, and it is truly bringing me to the place of my ambitions. What has been extremely satisfying is the response on the work I have done, ranging from gratitude because you’re feeling like a website is turning into a daycare when I crash the party with aircraft carriers, tanks and jet fighters or kind, encouraging, thoughtful and input-rich emails, blog posts, messages and comments. I celebrated my 150st blog post with the outpouring of my memories on the Flow icon design process, which Google crawled in minutes (!).
However, life as an independent (internet) design studio has its monetary uncertainties, and as my demands grow, my hardware grows insufficient, incapable of handling the tasks I throw at it. I work on a Core 1 Duo Macbook Pro, which isn’t very swift for the hard-core work. So let me be honest and cut to the chase; Cocoia, and thus, I, needs money.
No, I am not going to beg you for donations, I won’t throw you adsense stuff – this blog should remain full of free, quality, nag-free stuff. However, creative ideas that benefit you and me are good to explore. One of them is my new stock icon set; it’s comparatively priced very low (especially considering the high-resolution counterparts inside) and all future add-on packs are free for license holders.
But I have more ideas. Here is a rundown of what I am considering in the last summer months.
Iconizements are little advertisments on freeware icons. This may sound like a bizarre idea, but most icons I produce need a bit of stock layout or other visual material which I then make up myself. You could imagine the brand of the ‘Designer Icons’ TV icon being yours. Or something similar; an icon I could make in the future of a document can feature your content. It’s a total package that shows you on the download page as a sponsor of the icon set, and an oppurtunity for people feeling generous or just feeling like their public image can use a small boost. It’s not as far overboard as commissioning me for a whole icon set, but also not as cheap as donating a dollar. You can contact me for information about placing an iconizement in the future.
My applications are still being developed. Not being able to release them to make a living means I have to (not to worry, it is my great passion and craft) do design work on a freelance basis and give priority time to that. I do plan to release one of my applications around Leopard’s release – which one, I’d rather keep in the dark. Being overly optimistic about release dates is the least I can afford in my current situation.
Actual product advertisements are a thing I am considering as well, in the style of the Deck. If you look at the MacThemes frontpage, you can see what I mean by that. I might even offer complimentary ad design, so if there is interest for this let me know – These are all options I am considering, but there should be a reasonable degree of demand.
Naturally, I think all options are only interesting if they benefit you and me; a good living for me means the freedom to spend some time on freeware icons for you and other quality content. Let me know what you think, unabashedly, of my future plans in the comments or over email.