Icon Details

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Kenichi and I have been trading e-mails back and forth about the last icon draft. I asked him what he thought and he said that he would like the pencil to be more original.

I spent a little time digging around Flickr for pictures of colored pencils. I found this one that I like:

Notice that pencils are sometimes stamped with foil lettering and that the tips are rarely perfect once they have been used. Maybe adding some more fine detail like this will bring the icon to life.

I also wanted to play around with the arrows on the timeline and see if we can get them to look more like a sketch without loosing the clarity at smaller sizes. I took the last design and ran some Photoshop effects on the arrows (noise, motion blur, smudge tool, and color adjustments), to get a quick idea of how more sketchy arrows might look. I like it and think it helps separate the pencil and the chart.

I sent this back to Kenichi, so we'll see what he can do with these ideas. And thanks to all those who have provided feedback via the comments or e-mail! A big reason why I am blogging all this stuff is to harvest the wisdom and ideas of the community.

Labels: colored pencil, icon design, t2, timeline software