Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, OS, Software, Odds and ends
Good icons? You're soaking in it.
Giles Turnbull is pondering icons, more specifically what makes a good one. This is an interesting question since most of us spend a good deal of our time staring that this little masterpieces (unless you're one of those freaks who auto-hides the Dock).Giles lists a few icons that he likes (Notational Velocity,Spotlaser) but he admits that he is no designer. He turned to John Hicks (designer of FireFox's icon) and Jasper Hauser (creator of Camino's icon) to give their opinions about icons and list a few of their favorites.
I have always had a soft spot for the Finder icon, though I suppose that one is fairly obvious. How about you? Fire off a comment letting us know what icons you like the best.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Scott F said 11:54AM on 7-24-2006
ApZapper of course. And doesn't CyberDuck make you think of Ernie?
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Rafael said 11:55AM on 7-24-2006
Pages - The transparency is amazing. Turn your magnification to 100% to see what I mean.
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JT said 11:57AM on 7-24-2006
What's so freaky about auto hiding the dock?
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Chief said 11:57AM on 7-24-2006
adium
that little ducky just makes my day.
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Rafael said 12:03PM on 7-24-2006
"What's so freaky about auto hiding the dock?"
You're stealing yourself eye candy. Unless your apps all have ugly icons of course. ;-)
Now talking serious, I understand how some hide their docks, for space reasons is not a bad idea. I actually tried it once but didn't get used to it. I guess that for designers or those who run a lot of full-screen software it is better.
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Aaike said 12:25PM on 7-24-2006
SpeedDownload has one of te nicest icons in my opinion. And if you permit me to choose one of the round blueish icons I would choose OmniWeb.
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Smivey said 12:26PM on 7-24-2006
I think the Delicious Library icon is pretty nice, even though it has to bounce about twenty times before the application starts up.
What I don't like about most icons is how similar they look. For instance, I often find myself clicking on the Mac Address Book, when I wanted the Dictionary.
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claytron said 12:36PM on 7-24-2006
I'm one of those auto hiding freaks! I do it for more screen real estate and i use butler to launch most programs.
I fancy the Transmit icon.
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initials.bb.paris said 12:43PM on 7-24-2006
ain't nufin' freaky about auto-hiding the dock! when i have only 1 screen to edit video in final cut pro, every pixel of real estate counts ...
my favourite icons are probably Transmit, the latest VLC, Compressor. Automatic Duck is pretty cool too, but has a bit too much detail.
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Matt said 1:16PM on 7-24-2006
If you're on a 12" PowerBook like myself, you HAVE to autohide the dock unless you like working on even SMALLER screens.
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Scott F said 1:38PM on 7-24-2006
And for worst icons, look no further than Adobe's Creative Suite. They used to look different, so I could easily tell which application I was launching, or which application was associated with each document. Not they look so alike I have to pause and look at them.
I tried spacing them out in my dock (Illustrator on the left, InDesign in the middle, and Photoshop on the right), but I prefer groups of associated applications, and that messed up the whole system.
The worst part is that the icons are WRONG! If anything is a feather, it should be Illustrator (Feather > Quill > Pen > Illustrator). The cementheads at Adobe are doing their damnedest to make their programs worse. I wish I could get Illustrator 8 to run in OSX.
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Jeff said 3:40PM on 7-24-2006
Shiira's icon with the little fish is cool.
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Cutter said 7:20PM on 7-24-2006
Garageband's guitar icon. Its the exact same one as my Gibson 335 =]
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Max said 7:40PM on 7-24-2006
I hope he was kidding about Notational Velocity's icon...it looks like it was made with a few Photoshop filters and nothing else.
I like the OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle icons, as well as (surprisingly) the Firefox and Thunderbird icons. Also PHP Studio.
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bangler said 10:02PM on 7-24-2006
Hate FireFox but love the icon. Safari has a nice icon as well. I like the iChat bubble also... and... Compressor and Motion are both good. Agree w/ #11 about Adobe CS icons.. Don't make an ounce of sense and they're all too similar. If they're going to make all the icons the same they should make the interfaces the same too!
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Tim O. said 10:03PM on 7-24-2006
It's ether QuickTime's, iChat's, Automator's, or Firefox's icon. You can appreciate these icons best when you look at the really huge versions. I have a folder of beautiful 619 x 619 px transparent pngs that someone has on their site, however I can't provide a link because I have no clue where it was I downloaded them. I really like the firefox icon and was fortunate enough to run across a svg of it (I do have a link for this one (http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=23024)) and spent some of today adding glassy/aqua goodness to it and making it my desktop picture of the day. Although I dislike firefox as a browser on Mac OS X, I like it's icon.
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Ryan Biesemeyer said 10:16PM on 7-24-2006
Notational Velocity? Is he serious? That's like saying you really really like the animated gif's of rainbow-coloured smiley faces you find on anateur webpages. It probably took some work, as it was obviously created in 3D, but it is horrid.
My favourites are:
Address Book
Adobe CS2
Delicious Library
iChat
iSync
iWeb
Preview
Notae
OmniGraffle Pro
Transmission
VLC (stand alone cone)
And maybe a few more...
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TriangleJuice said 5:26AM on 7-25-2006
Automator, Pages, Transmit, Dashboard and last but certainly not least Xyle Scope!
That said, I really like the icon of our own application, TriMicSlots. Not because it's fancy, but because it seperates itself from the rest (probably because there is a lot black in it and it has a triangular shape). It really stands out in the application switcher!
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spil said 10:39AM on 7-26-2006
I know this is original sin, but i Kind of like the icon s for M$ office on mac. I don't like garageband's, it's just a guitar. Is TrangleJuice the only one here that has the dashboard icon on their dock? I've always just used f12, or a button on my mouse. Any body else use the dashboard icon?
Any way, what's the deal with the handbrake icon? It has like a martini glass and like a palm tree or something. I don't get what that has to do with ripping dvd's of "home movies".
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