The World of 32×32

I’m working on icon design now, and actually this is the first time I do such a thing. So I took this opportunity to have another look at the design of famous applications.

I reckon icons are representative of each application, but the canvas to depict it is limited to a size of 32px*32px. Compared to logo design and web design, there isn’t much room to put many elements in. Within such limitation, it surely is difficult to create a cool icon that represent the identity of the application. It’s really nice if we could simply convert logo to icon. Ah, wry smile…

However, looking at them again, I thought many of the famous applications of major companies are funny (maybe it’s too impolite that I make such a comment…). I mean, for example… I think it was previous Adobe Illustrator. Why venus?

And there are lots of theories and writings like “8 things you should not do when making icons”. They say we should not use letters. Maybe there are pros and cons on using letters, but think about Skype. That ‘S’ is their trademark and I think that’s a successful example. Recent Adobe icons are capital letter of each application on gradation, pretty simple. Thinking of previous icons, It was quite a change and was surprising, or surprising may be not the word…

Well, anyway, everything has theoties and basics, but that’s not all. In the designing world, if it looks nice, then it’ll be accepted. That’s it.

I guess this would bother me for a while. Profound… icon’s world.

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