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cookbookWhat 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.
cookbookFancy color names or Royal Blue
It 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.
cookbook10 Mistakes in Icon Design
It 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…
cookbookDrawing an Icon: Sketches and Metaphors
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.
cookbookDesigning an iconic language
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.
cookbookDonald Norman's Three Aspects of Design
A couple of hours ago, on the Olympia Stadium, Turin, the Flame of the XX Winter Olympics was ignited. Now thats 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.
cookbookThe Icon Book
If one studies the evolution of user interfaces since the 80s 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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cookbook10 Outstanding Metaphors in Icon Design laranz.wordpress.com: people om mac always kidding Windows........ When this comes to an end :(
cookbookHow we came up with the name for Iconza and later made its logo prorender: Guys, you should really consider a merchandise shop. I would gladly buy T-shirts and Yegor's prize winning characters or featuring the Iconza carro…
cookbookHow we came up with the name for Iconza and later made its logo prorender: Glad to be a part of it!
cookbookFive reasons for migrating to the new Illustrator CS4Dmitri Joukov: Pardon I didn't quite catch the idea of question. Could you try to ask someway else. Thanks.
cookbookFive reasons for migrating to the new Illustrator CS4 abby: how to make the working area in window, can teach me? i can find the way Thank, from abby.