I’m posting here a call for help, for anyone who is talented in icon design and that would be willing to help me out with designing an application icon for PhotoFlow.
The icon should be meant for application launchers, therefore is needs to be simple and nice-looking at small sizes. Some bigger icon for splash-screen-like uses is I would say less urgent, but still nice to have.
I’m really bad at graphics design, and so far I could not come up with anything decent… if you have some ideas to share with me, you’ll be rewarded with my eternal gratitude!
I would say no text or just PF or PhF, no rainbow (too much used) and rather minimal to be readable at small sizes.
No need for 3D look, just something sufficiently informative and distinguishable… I know it’s vague, but when I say that “I have no ideas” I really mean it
You’d be surprised how decent the Filmulator icon looks at small sizes, despite spelling out the full “Film emulator” in the icon. It’s less about being legible than about the words having a recognizable shape.
Do you have at least a favorite color you would like to emphasize? I like orange and earth tones so I made the Filmulator icon (and the UI) based around that color, for example.
It would have three pictograms of images in a diagonal stack getting submerged in water. It would get across image editing and the layer aspect at the same time…
Heh, heh…yeah, I thought about that. The original was monochrome, but I really feel like the whole thing could use a pop of color. Here it is without the CMYK-ish aperture blades. I also increased the size of the small text to make it more legible.
Upon going back and actually reading your original post, I think one of my earlier iterations may be more in keeping with what you described.
Anyone is welcome to to SVG if they have any ideas.
I do believe that icon design guidelines ought to be respected. After several decades of working on the problem people have figured out that > 99% of the time, putting the full name of the application in the icon, for example, is very far from optimal. Indeed most of the time it’s a very poor idea. The only exception I’m aware of are abbreviations, e.g. Qt for the Qt Assistant icon, or PS for Photoshop, etc. Otherwise the broad consensus is, don’t do it.
Thanks to all for your help, I see a lot of nice things being proposed here!
I really like the glass look of @Dariusz_Duma icon… maybe we could combine that with the Iintials in the center as in the earlier attempt by @MLC?
@CarVac proposal has on the other end the great merit of trying to put emphasis on the idea of editing layers… maybe one could remove the name and try to make the layers more evident? Like a levels, a curve and then the final image? I’ve been trying to put together a sketch in this direction this evening, but that’s already beyond my inkscape skills…
@damonlynch (love Rapid Photo Downloader, btw) is right, of course. I think some of my confusion stems from how broadly this “icon” is to be used. Strictly speaking, an icon and a logo are not the same thing. And although it is true that, in recent years, the line between the two has become somewhat blurred, icons are inherently restrained by the dimensional requirements for cross platform readability. While a logo can literally be anything. In my experience, it’s generally easier to start with a logo and then derive an icon form that. This makes it far easier to maintain cohesion and somewhat future proof your brand.
@CarVac’s (and, to some extent, my own earliest) attempt is, for all intents and purposes, a logo. I too like the emphasis on the layers, but when I attempted to play around with the idea, I couldn’t come up with a way to make it meld well.
@Dariusz_Duma’s example definitely falls under the icon category. However, it lacks the brand distinction that has become so important in icons these days.
@Carmelo_DrRaw It’s funny that you mentioned incorporating a curve, as I spent a little time (toddler permitted, of course) playing around with that very idea. All I came up with was a funky yin yang looking thing that I was not at all happy with. Here is link to my svg file. I’ll continue to update it as I play around. Feel free to pilfer anything you want.
It should be noted that, although I did go to school for this, I’ve never considered myself tremendously good at executing the concepts and everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt.
