New icon, work in progress

Treasured footage, corrupt movie, how to repair?

As it’s just for a secondary application, that plays a small role in a bigger thing, I haven’t engaged the services of a professional designer.

I’ve still some rough edges and details to polish, but I’m pretty happy with that. It took me about 10 hours of work:
Brainstorming, selecting ideas, developing a few ideas, handmade sketches, mock-ups to see what works and what doesn’t, pick an idea, and finally do detailled drawing.

A few lessons learnt:

  • You will end with something different than what you plan.
  • Design at once Application Name + Icon + “Catchphrase”. Otherwise it’s too heavy for only one element to convey all the force of your idea. Make each element reinforce and complete the other two.
  • No more than 2 or 3 visual elements in your icon. Beyond that, it will not be understood and will not work at small sizes.
    • August 18th, 2008 in General