Application icon design is hard

[JOM]

Hi,

Can't find a proper DiBo, so might as well ask here... It's about designing application SVG-T icon, using Inkscape.

I have made two experiments:
1) Total disaster, barely managed to get anything on-screen
2) Close to what I wanted, but not exactly right

Last time I tried to draw the application icon using 64x64 resolution, but that was basically a guess. Does anyone have any opinion about drawing icons? Would for example using 48x48 be any better?

Is there any place anywhere, where to look for tips, hints, mistakes etc. about S60 SVG-T application icon drawing and creation (trying to maximize search hits for later reference )

Cheers,

--jouni

[bogdan.galiceanu]

Well it's very often a matter of trial and error. I for one almost never come close to the desired result in my first attempt. But I've found that 50x50 is a pretty good resolution (but of course that depends on the icon's design and individual taste ). And an interesting thing I've noticed is that on the E90 (v07.40.1.2 firmware at least) icons have to be a bit bigger than on devices that have normal screens.

This article has some tips.

[JOM]

My first trial was about 450x400, which definitely was main cause of problems . When such a big image is scaled down, everything got blurred. Also it wasn't a square, which might explain why it was only partially visible..

64x64, 50x50 and 44x44 gives an idea that design on smaller resolution seems to be better for icon design. Have to try that.

Adobe Illustrator CS2 ... will convert a photo to an SVG line drawing with color fills.

Sounds like it's made for me but price is problem. Recently read blog article about how developers choose their platform and it was summarized in two issues: coolness and money. PyS60 allows making cool things, but no money... That has to be fixed somehow.

Thanx,

--jouni

[sriky27]

Hi,
Just to make your life more easy you could convert your svg to svg-tiny
its smaller and faster to get rendered you could find more information about it in the following link
http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/fo...ad.php?t=63460

Regards,
Sriky

[JOM]

Thanx for reminding! Icon size dropped from 5k to 2.5k, so it's definitely worth converting Inkscape images!

Thanx,

--jouni

[aaaaapo]

64x64, 50x50 and 44x44 gives an idea that design on smaller resolution seems to be better for icon design.

I don't know how much the size matters, but I'm successfully using svg-icons sized width="151" height="122" and width="64" height="64".

I'll suggest you this:

1. get some icon file which is known to behave well as an application icon.
2. open it in Inkscape
3. delete old contents
4. create new one
5. save with a new name
6. try it with Ensymble

Try e.g. with Ped's icon:
http://code.google.com/p/ped-s60/sou...if/app/ped.svg