[thelist] ICONS

Chris Blessing webguy at mail.rit.edu
Wed Jul 17 12:29:05 CDT 2002


Mark-

Designing icons isn't just about the program; it's about how you design
them.  If you don't properly scale down the palette, for example, your
16-color icon will look like shite.  You have to design separate versions
from scratch or modify them to scale down properly.

The other thing to try to do is to work with crisp fonts, usually sans-serif
fonts like Verdana and Arial work well.  There's a reason why M$ chose to
use "M$ Sans Serif" as the default windows font for just about everything...
aside from that, just keep in mind what you're doing when you're creating
the icon master image.  It should be simple, easy to read, and crisp -- so
avoid a lot of anti-aliased edges (circles, for example, unless you want
jagged edges) and blocky stout text (like impact, for example) and you
should be ok.

Also remember that the more times you resample something the less accurate
the resize procedure is going to be, and you will get fuzzy images.

HTH!

BTW, I use Microangelo myself, importing bitmaps I create in PS.  Still got
my old '98 copy. :)

Chris Blessing
webguy at mail.rit.edu
http://www.330i.net


> Is there a program - somewhere in the world - that can make a good looking
> icon. I currently am designing icons pixel by pixel in a shareware program
> named Axialis. This is a tedious process and I am sure there has to be
> something better. I am looking for something that could represent icons at
> 16 x 16 pixels, 32 x 32 pixels @ 16-color and 256-color. I am looking for
> something that can give me the same quality icons as Adobe has. The
> Photoshop, and Illustrator icons are clear and great looking no
> matter what
> size they are.
>
> I have tried designing icons in Photoshop and Illustrator, but
> they come out
> blurry (with anti-aliasing) and crappy (without anti-aliasing).
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> markJ




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