| Joe
This article looks at how to keep your Illustrator files ‘fully’ vector and still create an attractive vector Drop Shadow effect. For any icon designer it’s a straight-forward process to create a nice, feathered, transparent drop shadow in Photoshop, and the same process can be followed in Illustrator too by using the ‘Effect -> Stylize… Read more »
Icon Scaling What I really love about Icon Workshop is its fantastic scaling engine. I did a comparison in a previous post (Why Fireworks Rocks for Icons), of how the Adobe products render off 16×16 PNG files and the results were different for each product but none of them compares to how well Icon Workshop… Read more »
Axialis have recently released version 6.62 of their excellent ‘Icon Workshop‘ Icon Design software so I thought it was a good enough excuse to talk about the software and how I use it. Icon Workshop What does it do? Icon workshop has been around for a number of years now, prior to which there weren’t really… Read more »
I find the most efficient way to produce quality icons is to spend a good proportion of the time allocated for the project, on the initial ‘Style Development’ stage. It might sound pretty obvious but getting this part of the project spot on can save a great deal of time later on. The client needs… Read more »
Need iOS 9 Icon Sizes? Check out our new simple guide * UPDATED* 03/10/2012 * For the New iPad Retina display & iPhone 5 All you need to know about the required iPhone & iPad App Icon Sizes Apple’s iPad and more recently iPad 2 have been with us for quite a while now so… Read more »
| Joe
Designing a Button Style Custom Icon This tutorial will explain the process of designing and creating an icon from one of my favourite sets of custom icons. This dark, metallic and slightly glossy set was produced for a ‘button-type’ custom icon design to be used in a PDA driven software application. The icons all feature… Read more »
| Joe
Keeping things crisp when Scaling Icons During a large custom icon design project with multiple application icon and interface icons, it can sometimes be a daunting task having to create multiple size versions of the same icon – assuming you’re working with pixel-based ‘bitmap’ raster icons. Indeed, in the majority of instances, it is not… Read more »
As an Icon Designer I am a big fan of Adobe Fireworks, which doesn’t get the kudos of its more popular siblings such as Photoshop and Illustrator but there are some things it does far better and most revolve around its excellent handling of the PNG file format. What is so great about PNG? The… Read more »
An important element of developing an application is conveying usability through the interface for users of the product. Users need to feel that the application has been developed to meet their needs through extensive market research, as well as finding it simple and straightforward to use. Too often, however, developers go overboard from a design… Read more »
Designing a fresh set of icons can really revamp the interface and usability of your application or product. There are several factors to consider when choosing your icons: size, simplicity, use of colour, avoiding text, etc. But these icons can sometimes represent a function through metaphor, and in so doing it is important that your… Read more »
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