Designer six tips for designing excellent application icons

Apple released IOS 7 on the WWDC in June, along with a lot of interesting content on the Web, including a speech by Apple UX evangelist Mike Stern, called the best Practice Guide for good IOS design. The first part of the speech mentions what is an excellent application design in Apple's eyes, and then he enumerates six important elements to consider when designing an application icon.

First Mike Stern explains the importance of UI and application icons: Users do not evaluate applications based on how much technology you use, or how many APIs they integrate, or how well you use the code, but what your application can do to them and how they feel. Users expect your application to bring them intuitive, wonderful, and even magical experiences.

Six strokes to help you design a good icon

Some bugs are often made by developers, and they cause many applications not to be audited by app stores, and bad app icon design is one of the culprits.

Application icon is your application of the first window, in order to win the favor of users, you have to try to break the siege. The image below is a screenshot of the application in the Apple App Store, where the Path makes a clear view of the "camera lens". Remember, beauty and easy identification are the two main qualities of designing icons.

When users notice your app icon in the App Store, they start looking at the user experience it can bring, how comfortable it is, how intuitive it is, how much it can meet the needs of the user. If an application's icon is designed to feel well-designed, it is often assumed that the entire application is also finely polished. A good first impression will prompt the user to look at the rest of the application-how good is the technology you are using? How safe and stable is your application? Better than competitors? So it's really important to devote time and focus on designing your application icon.

Now let's see, what makes your app icon stand out? The first is aesthetics, secondly more important is easy to identify. How can we do these two points? Take a look at the following six strokes:

First trick: Use unique graphics

The following four icons are different-some of them contain a lot of colors or gradients, but a simple graphic is a common feature. This gives them an eye for recognition.

Icons will appear in a number of different sizes, in the application store, they will be larger, on the main screen on the phone will be relatively small, appear in the Notification Center and the application folder, the smaller. Make sure your application icons can be scaled in all sizes and always have a clear recognition.

The second trick: careful use of color

Don't abuse color, one or two is enough. There are many good application icons designed to use a lot of colors, but this is hard to see.

The third trick: avoid using photos

Try not to take photos directly as an application icon. The Sipp in the figure below is an excellent example of how you can better represent a theme while using the elements of a class photo.

The trick: Avoid using a lot of text

Icons can be used without words, good practice is to use symbols or company logo as a symbol. Here are some good examples.

Five strokes: accurate transmission of information

In short, let the user see your icon and know what it is. IOS 7 has made a drastic change to the proposed materialized icon, but there are still some highlights of the proposed materialization design. The 2012 Apple design won Champion app monitors tells you exactly what it is, Square Wallet and one Password. Lifekraze's icon won the essence of materialization, so Mike Stern can not help but praise "do not know how they are designed, this is simply the highest state of art." ”

Recruit: Creative

Creativity makes your application icons stand out, and these applications follow the rules of innovation. In general, the secret is to develop some simple concepts, sometimes the most complex rendering is based on simple graphics.

PS: Test the visual effects of application icons on different background wallpaper

Make sure your icon looks good on all kinds of wallpaper, and don't forget to test the effect of putting it in a folder.

Case study: Turnplay

Turnplay is a music player that can simulate vinyl discs on the IPad, and its icons are designed by Ramotion, the famous icon design company.

When Ramotion began to design, they took their usual approach-drawing to draw. You can see the different attempts made by the team in the following image--putting the product's alpha T into the icon, adding fingerprints to the record, and so on.

The final results are as follows: Round disc plus triangle play key--the simple combination of two kinds of basic figure.

Martin LeBlanc, the author of this article, is the founder of icon search engine Iconfinder.

From: 36kr