Icons Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

iOS 7 Clock app icon shows the current time... to the second

by Steven Sande (Jun 14th, 2013)

As more and more developers are getting their hands on the iOS 7 beta, we're starting to hear about some rather interesting little touches. The latest? The iOS 7 Clock app icon shows the current time, complete with moving second hand. This is according to an unnamed developer who sent in the above ...

Creative uses for App Store icons: Ransom Apps and App Icon Quiz

by Mike Schramm (Apr 24th, 2013)

Brian Stucki is the developer behind MacMiniColo (the Mac mini colocation outfit in Las Vegas), and he recently sent us a fun project he's hosting called "Ransom Apps." It's just a silly little web app, but the idea is that you enter a phrase of text, and Ransom Acts returns your phrase written ...

Extract App Resource Icons with AppleScript

by Ben Waldie (Apr 22nd, 2013)

Whether I'm preparing for a demo or writing an article, blog post, book, or technical documentation, I often find myself performing the same set of repetitive steps. I need to navigate into an app's packaged resources folder, find one or more icon files, occasionally convert them to PNG and scale ...

Macintosh icon designer talks about her work at Apple

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 19th, 2013)

Path has a nice interview with Susan Kare, a graphic designer and creator of the original Macintosh icons and typefaces that so many of us are familiar with. Kare reveals that she first came to work at Apple with the title "Macintosh Artist." She got the job through a high school friend, Andy ...

Mothership releases Prepo 2, helps devs create app icons and retina artwork

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 7th, 2013)

One of the challenges facing developers isn't always writing clean code. A small development team also has to contend with images and icons, which are often the first things a user sees when he stumbles upon your app and takes it on its maiden run. One app that promises to make artwork and ...

DevJuice: Preview your icons

by Erica Sadun (Jan 22nd, 2013)

Sharing icons by email and Dropbox never really captures the way each image will appear on-screen. That's why developer Michael Burford and his brother created a web page mock-up solution that automatically adds an iPhone background and styles the icons to match the way they display ...

Walls360 offers Susan Kare icons for your walls

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jan 11th, 2013)

Walls360 is a cool startup in Las Vegas that makes high-quality (but affordable) wall art. They've got the license to some great properties, like Star Trek, Plants vs. Zombies and a host of children's books, and now they are offering nearly all of the icon artwork produced by famed designer ...

Icons & Coffee releases new set of custom OmniFocus icons

by Mike Wehner (Dec 14th, 2012)

If you're a productivity junkie, you're probably already familiar with OmniFocus. And, if you're familiar with OmniFocus, you've probably messed around with changing the app's default perspective icons. Now, Icons & Coffee has released a new set of icons made specifically for OmniFocus, ...

The Iconfactory's David Lanham on building homescreen-worthy icons

by Steven Sande (Nov 20th, 2012)

When you admire an app icon on your Mac or iOS device, chances are that it may have been designed by The Iconfactory's David Lanham. I had the unique experience of having him sketch me over FaceTime for a custom avatar portrait, and he's a talented and friendly artist. The Verge's Ellis ...

Bartender will hide your menu bar icons, goes to version 1.0

by Mike Schramm (Oct 25th, 2012)

Bartender is a simple but excellent little app that lets you control that flood of icons up in your menu bar on the top of your OS X window. Now, designer Ben Surtees, who we spoke with earlier this year about where the app came from, has released version 1.0.2 of the app, officially releasing ...

Joseph Wain designs near-ubiquitous iOS icons

by Steven Sande (Oct 18th, 2012)

Chances are very good that almost any iOS app you use contains icons that were designed by one man -- Joseph Wain. Wain doesn't work for Apple and never has. Instead, he's a designer who was impressed at an early age by the work of seminal Apple and NeXT icon designer Susan Kare, but not ...

OS X 10.7.3 includes new high-res pointer icons, rampant speculation ensues

by Chris Rawson (Feb 7th, 2012)

Soon after the 10.7.3 update to OS X Lion, people started finding subtle differences in the pointer icons for OS X (hat tip to Daring Fireball). Specifically, the link, grab, copy, and screenshot pointers have all been updated with slightly new iterations for the first time since OS X 10.2, ...

iPhone icon cupcakes look touchable, tasty

by Mike Schramm (Dec 29th, 2011)

We haven't posted a really good iPhone cake in quite a while now, so here we go: Reader Tim sends in this set of cupcakes that his girlfriend made him for his 21st birthday, and boy do they look good. There are a few things that, as Apple obsessive, we would call out in there, including the ...

Inside Susan Kare's 'iconic' sketchbooks

by Mike Schramm (Nov 23rd, 2011)

We've mentioned Susan Kare and her work on the site before, but it's a story that's always worth repeating: She's the woman behind some of Apple's most iconic, well, icon designs. Kare was working as a curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco when her friend Andy Hertzfeld asked her to ...

Three ways to change Lion's Finder window sidebar

by Mike Schramm (Sep 9th, 2011)

It took me a little while, but I finally last weekend updated to Lion, and so far ... I think I like it. I kind of miss my old Spaces feature, and I did turn off reverse scrolling right away, but it does seem to run better than Snow Leopard, and Mission Control is pretty sweet. Another thing ...