The icons or baby faces used as part of user interface have now turned into a major aspect of product branding. With powerful computers, enhanced graphics capabilities, advanced tools for illustration, and professionals to advocate rich user experience, icon design has become more important and complex than ever before! Windows Vista has raised the standard of quality icons even higher. An interface design project forced the author to think about ’style’ in icon design.
What are the possible ways to overcome problems related to style of icons?
- Create sample icons which are representative of the complexity and overall range of icons required for the project. These icons should be best rendered and acceptable in terms of desired quality and style.
- Define style guidelines (all attributes shown above as applicable) based on sample icon designs.
- Sensitize the entire design team to understand the style sensitive attributes of icon design. Help them notice and feel each attribute of the style.
- Select the designers whose style of designing/rendering is naturally similar.
- Lead designer(s) to sketch and compose all icons before they get rendered.
- Lead designer to monitor and guide the rendering (This is similar to the model of key animators and in-between artists followed in animation field).
- Review the stylistic aspects as per the guidelines.
- Ask users / designers / developers to identify the misfit icons in terms of style.
Proper definition of style attributes can be helpful in evaluating the consistency of style.
- Refine
Beware of Style in Icon Design
The Identity Archives Project is a keyword-searchable database of logos and brand identity designs from around the world. Registration is not required and use of the database is free and open to everyone- be it designers, brand managers, marketing professionals, educators, students, brand identity design enthusiasts or the general public.
The Identity Archives
The website takes you through the following topics:
- Symbols: How and what they communicate
- How handwriting developed and translated into printed type
- Typographic Milestones: 1450-1960
- A condensed history of the book
- Arts & crafts and the private press movement
- The poster’s development and social impact
- The twentieth century avant-garde’s influence of graphic design
- The Bauhaus
- The origins of advertising
- The digital revolution in graphic design
- New Wave, post modern, post industrial and deconstuctionism
The History of Graphic Design
This website, which contains the material of the course VA312, taught at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey; attempts to walk you through the long and diverse history of a particular aspect of human endeavour: The translation of ideas, stories and concepts that are largely textual and/or word based into a visual format, i.e. visual communication.
It talks about:
- Rocks and Caves
- Ideograms
- The Alphabet
- The Art of the Book
- The Printing Press
- The Masters of Type
- Breaking the Grid
- The Avantgarde
- The Modernists
- The Computer
The History of Visual Communication
This NASA site provides a guide to color design for information visualization. It includes:
- a step by step process for designing color usage in complicated interface graphics
- two detailed examples of design of aerospace displays
- a new color selection tool to support the recommended design process
- information about color usage standards and guidelines
- information about applied color science, and reference resources
Aerospace graphics get special attention, but much of the information should be useful for other color graphics as well.
Using Color in Information Display Graphics
Get your free portfolio theme added (or suggest one)
If you want to get a WordPress portfolio theme added to the list below, send in the name of the website using the submission form. If it is good, you should see it added within two days of your submission.
A list of excellent free portfolio WordPress themes
- Sharpfolio- designed to enable creative professionals to showcase their work in a simple and clean portfolio
- Portfolio- a good theme that can act as a starting point in the creation of portfolios
- Profolio-a portfolio for artists, designers, photographers, or anyone that has creative visual pieces to share
- Fotofolio- theme for photographers
- Linquist- a simple, portfolio oriented theme. Inspired by and partially based on the fantastic Sharpfolio theme.
- Ascari- a simple but interesting theme which serves very well for portfolios.
Create a processing graphic in a jiffy.
- Choose the type of animated gif preloader you want
- Enter the background color code desired
- Click “Transparent background” in case needed
- Pick the foreground color code you want
- Set the sizes of the preloader, if needed
- Choose your animation speed by dragging the blue ball
- Press “Generate preloader” and wait for your preloader be generated
preloaders.net.
The main purpose Videolectures.Net is to provide free and open access of a high quality video lectures presented by distinguished scholars and scientists at the most important and prominent events like conferences, summer schools, workshops and science promotional events from many fields of Science.
Psychology video lectures
Visual Arts video lectures
A resource for grid based design.
The Grid System.