The Icon Question

[Máirín Duffy]

Joachim Frieben wrote:
> "Bluecurve" has friendly, crisp looking icons due to a well chosen color
> scheme, consistent perspective, and noticeable outlines which improve
> contrast. Icons are pictograms and as such -simplified- images of real
> objects with the aim of easy recognizability. Photorealistic icons are
> rather counterproductive, especially at small sizes. The "cartoonish" look
> of "Bluecurve" exactly fits this paradigm. In the "GNOME" panels and menus,
> a mere 24 pixels is the default size. This has to be kept in mind.
> The attached screenshot shows the huge difference between "good" and "bad"
> design. The "Bluecurve" package icon is much more distinct than the "puplet"
> one (the latter is too small anyway). The new "gnome-power-manager" is
> particularly poor. It looks slack and fuzzy and is weakly detached from the
> background. The dropshadow make things rather worse. The screenshot speaks
> for itself, doesn't it? 

We do have options in terms of giving the new icons more clarity at smaller 
sizes. Modifying the palette to be a bit brighter is a good idea. Also, we can 
institute a guideline of changing the perspective of icons to be 'dead on' at 
sizes 24 px or less (and keep them isometric at sizes > 24 px)

When I mocked up the puplet icons, I did both a 'dead on' perspective version 
and isometric version but the feedback I received was that people preferred the 
isometric version.

(You can see the 'dead on' perspective versions of the package icon here: 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/NewIconDevelopment?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=puplet-updatesavailable-mizmo.png

(towards the upper left of the grid of 24 x 24 icons)

~m