Blog: Secrets from the Chef

Vector rendering: 3D graphics in icon and logo design

Andrew Pushkin, 10 November 2010 Comments (0)

Adobe Illustrator Fundamentals Future

Over the past few years, the 3D graphics technologies have been developing at sky rocket speed. The calculation algorithms of photorealistic images, increase in the number of processor cores and the RAM volume (as well as the new GPU rendering technology) have made it possible to obtain high quality pictures while working from home. 3D has become a powerful tool of graphic design. There are a number of unarguable reasons for using the 3D approach with speed of operation being the most substantial.

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What icons are for

Yegor Gilyov, 6 November 2008 Comments (0)

Fundamentals Icon design Master-class Usability

What icons are for You would not believe it but in 1985 Apple asserted an idea in its developers’ guide to replace text messages with icons wherever possible. As though icons would be more clear to a novice user than words. Of course this is bollocks. It is much easier to express any idea in words.

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Fancy color names or Royal Blue

Denis Kortunov, 28 March 2008 Comments (1)

Fundamentals

Royal BlueIt all started when our client wrote, seemingly as an afterthought: “Please change the color of the icon to royal blue.” To tell you the truth, this request struck me as rather unusual. We have dark blue, light blue and ordinary blue, but no royal blue that I knew about. So I did some research.

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10 Mistakes in Icon Design

Denis Kortunov, 12 February 2008 Comments (93)

Criticism Fundamentals Icon design

10 Mistakes in Icon DesignIt is much easier to criticize somebody else’s work than to create something cool yourself. But if you apply a systematic approach to criticizing, make a numbered list and prepare illustrations, it will be regarded as a fully-fledged analysis! In my opinion, icon design is undergoing a transitional period. On the one hand, screen resolutions are increasing, hence enhancing icons. On the other hand, we still have good old pixels. Icons sized 16×16 and even smaller are still widely used. And so, here are the most commonly observed mistakes in icon design…

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Drawing an Icon: Sketches and Metaphors

Dmitri Joukov, 5 July 2007 Comments (0)

Fundamentals Icon design Master-class

Rejoice, our young fans of digital miniature! The festival has finally come to your town. Turbomilk in my person is starting a series of posts on how we draw icons: from the moment of placing the task and receiving an advance payment to sending the final versions to the customer. Eugene Artsebasov, our illustrator, was so kind to assist me.

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Designing an iconic language

Yegor Gilyov, 21 June 2007 Comments (4)

Fundamentals Icon design Master-class Usability

Last fall I made a brief report at a conference organized by RusCHI and 1C in the context of celebrating the World Usability Day. I was talking about designing a user interface icon language. Following the “better later than never” principle, I hereby bring the same report to your attention in the form of text with illustrations.

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Donald Norman’s Three Aspects of Design

Yegor Gilyov, 11 February 2006 Comments (0)

Fundamentals

A couple of hours ago, on the Olympia Stadium, Turin, the Flame of the XX Winter Olympics was ignited. Now that’s a good point to recall the pictograms which go beyond computer interfaces. Traditionally, every Olympic Games have a unique set of pictograms representing various sports. This is how we have a brilliant opportunity to look at different approaches to one and the same task of design.

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The Icon Book

Yegor Gilyov, 7 February 2006 Comments (0)

Books Fundamentals Icon design Reviews

If one studies the evolution of user interfaces since the 80’s of the last century up to now, it is difficult to get rid of the feeling that the trade of icon-building, which hardly was able to become an engineering science (e. g., in the Macintosh System 7 interface) can now be regarded as a fine art (Windows XP and Mac OS X).

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