The art of the icon

So recently I’ve been upping my photoshop skills. Inspired by a discussion on Mint Pages I have decided to have a go at icon creation. Why not? I’ve never really considered making icons before, not because I didn’t want to but because I’m lazy and just use the same set everyone does. With some idea as to how to go about making icons and a nice little helper, I plodded on an popped open the ol’ photoshop.

creating ‘blobs’

So I made my first icon, a little man. Well, a man zoomed in 1000 times. At scale of 1, a blob. Making icons viewable (especially at such a small size at 16px*16px) is close to impossible. Normally in photoshop I never fill the canvas, I like a little space to the side of my work, a little ‘relaxation’ space. You can’t do that with icons, your pixel by pixel creation has to touch as much side of the canvas as possible, or it’ll be a blob.

I think that these days, with so many great icon artists around, designers and normal internet users just take them for granted. We just assume that these icons are made with no effort and it’s as simple as that. You’re wrong, I was wrong, we all were wrong. Each and every icon requires at least half an hour to get right (well it does for me – and mine aren’t perfect). Each and every icon also requires great care and skill to complete (which is why mine are rubbish).

the result

My attempts (can you guess what each is?):

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