[Bf-taskforce25] Icons design

[William Reynish]

On 21 Jun, 2009, at 12:32 PM, Andrzej Ambroż wrote:

> William Reinisch wrote:
>
>> [...] if we do adopt multiple sizes, it quickly becomes unpractical
>> with our current icon sheet. For multiple sizes per icon, an icon
>> format such as .icns is also a possibility, to keep each icon nicely
>> packed together [...]
>
> Yes, there's  libicns library under GNU licence available but the  
> problem
> with *.icns format is that there are no cross-platform editing tools  
> that I
> know. Are there any? For Windows at least?

Hmm, yeah .icns may be more Mac-specific that i thought ;) I believe  
there are tools for Windows, but perhaps it's not worth it, especially  
if they should be easily editable by anyone, using open source tools.


>
>> But then again, if the tool icons will be identical they don't really
>> communicate anything ;) Probably better to either have no icons, or  
>> to
>> only make icons for the most common tools - like the top 20 or so. By
>> no means all operators! And you are right, most tools are too
>> complicated to communicate well with 16*16 pixels.
>
> So, Blenderheads, name the top 20 tools You'd like to have icons for  
> and
> I'll try to make some 16 and 32pix sketches.

Heh, of course this is the hard part ;) For edit mode it should be  
fairly easy - there aren't even that many modeling tools (Subdivide,  
extrude, loop cut, bevel). Perhaps we need icons for the basic  
operators in general, like transform, duplicate, snap? But these work  
in all modes and just about all editors too, so not quite sure about  
that. It might be weird to have buttons for those operations in the 3d  
view, but not in other editors.

>
>> I know your icons were designed to look good at 16*16 pixels, but
>> since they are vectors, have you tried scaling them 200% while
>> maintaining the 1 pixel stroke size? It might not look too bad.
>
> I tried rescaling but higher resolution needs some extra love -  
> 32pix icons
> should have more tiny details that give the overall finish/decor  
> feeling -
> some shadows, light reflect, beveling and loads of other things that  
> can
> (read: "have to") be dropped for smaller sizes. Imagine plain 200%  
> enlarged
> gold cube :D Pure horror.
> Every bit will have to be remade somehow. Not from scratch  
> fortunately.

That's what I thought. It might be good as a starting point though?  
One of the main tips I've heard again and again from icon designers is  
to start with the small sizes, and scale it up from there, because  
then you know it can be communicated in a compact way - it's easier to  
add more small details at larger sizes.

Of course other option is to just use vectors instead of bitmaps. This  
works especially well for iconic, flat icons, but probably not so much  
for nicer, more detailed ones...

-W


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