THE DREAMER

Modern Icon Design

I would like to highlight one very specific topic associated with modern icon design. Perhaps someone could guess what will be discussed there. I would like to share my thoughts, not as a designer, but as a man who runs iOS app design and development company.

Everyone knows that the AppStore grows rapidly, and each application needs an icon. These icons are designed by in-house designers, freelance designers or companies who are focused on iconography. And everything seems to be fine, but there is something that made me write this article…

Thanks for a terrific website called Dribbble, now designers can show all their mastery of digital art and make a large number of ‘icons’ that are essentially illustrations:

 

 When it comes to game apps, everything looks good. Take a look at this great illustration below:

 

However it doesn’t work for other apps. These icons must comply with all icon design rules. An icon should have understandable metaphor, exaggerated elements, all objects have to be recognizable at required size (e.g.114x114px for iPhone). Unfortunately, we see less and less of these ‘true’ icons now.

There are some reasons:

1. Modern client surfs Dribbble or other design portfolios and makes decision based on popular works. His criteria is a number of likes/appreciations etc. A lot of likes help to drive some downloads for your product while your shot is at ‘Popular’, however it doesn’t mean a success on the AppStore. Dribbble ‘Like’ is just a subjective point of view from design community, this opinion may be completely different from views of a product audience.

2. Nowadays we see a lot of 3D designers who have skills in 3D modeling and visualization without having theoretical knowledge in icon design. They actively spread their very detailed icon renders sometimes without retouching them. I even will not say about complete drawing from scratch at Photoshop.





Then we got the following situation - designers with 2d skills don’t know whether it is easy or difficult to achieve such results. So they start to imitate the style, because it drives a lot of ‘likes’, and thereby increase details of their icons. Ultimately, they move away from the notion of iconography.

3. Excessively high details is a way to justify a high price for icon design, it is my personal belief. Someone here may disagree with me, but I think this may be the cause. Agree, it is hard to explain to your client that you have spent only around 5 hours on a final rendering at Photoshop. So the reasonable client’s question is: ‘Why should I pay N-thousand dollars then?’ :) No one cares about your deep analytical work on metaphor and hours of brainstorms. Actually an icon is a product logo, visual identity and it doesn’t have to be complex. Any fool can make things complex, it takes a genius to make things simple, isn’t it? :)

4. If app design market requires to incorporate the Panorama ‘Borodino Battle’ in 114px then designer do this because money has no smell :-D

 
Certainly, to be earned we all have to look for a compromise between customer expectations and quality final result but sometimes designer should have courage to say ‘no’.

Because of these reasons I want to encourage designers and developers to ensure that they are still trying to penetrate into the essence of their work and took inspiration from the right sources. Eventually, an icon should be an icon and it should perform its task well. We have an excellent example of companies such as Apple and Square. Let them inspire you to do something very simple, but very memorable, something that will live for a long time, because simple things are beyond trends and time, they just work. Ask yourself if you want to leave something behind…

I want to present you some examples of what I would call the icons:















I look forward to see your comments!
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