Evolution of an Icon

Icon design is tough business. It’s gotta look good at full size, but it also has to scale down and look good when it’s just a tiny icon on your device.

Here’s my first stab at the icon for Spider Prank. It was back when I had a purple interface.


Actually I think this looks pretty good. But the purple interface wasn’t working for me. So back to the drawing board.

Here’s version #2:


I was trying to match the silver, sleek interface I’d settled on. But I think I missed the mark with this icon. The silhouette looks pretty boring. Plus the uniform legs make a visual mess when shrunk down.

A challenge I had was I wanted the icon to be really dark and menacing. But the spider was black. Hard to make black show up on black. I wondered what would happen if I tried the spider inversed. Version #3:

I kinda liked that version. But ultimately I decided that I need to showcase the hero– the spider itself in all of its 3D glory. That’s the main selling point of the app, so I figured I needed to at least feature it prominently in the icon. Version #4:

I was pretty happy with this. Decided it just need a little levels adjustment to make it pop more. So I added more contrast, and voila, version #5:

I think this one’s a keeper. But who knows? I’ll have to sit with it a little and play with it on my device(s) to see if it really does the trick. Also it’ll be important to get some feedback from testers. Almost to beta testing! Yeehaw!

Comments (0)

› No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

Allowed Tags - You may use these HTML tags and attributes in your comment.

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Pingbacks (0)

› No pingbacks yet.