7 Principles of Effective Icon Design
Pretty cool article on icon design by Sean Hodge "7 Principles of Effective Icon Design". Also we like the design of PSDTuts where article is posted.
True Stories: Behind the Scene
We often write
rather useful stuff.
rather useful stuff.
About this Blog
We at TurboMilk talk about the subtleties and nuances of visual interface design in a popular scientific style. In our blog we give you touching stories about icons, critique of other people’s designs — and praise of our own! — plus exciting links and news on the life of the company.
- Journal — snappy notes bursting with info on given topics
- Cookbook — extensive ponderings about the eternal subjects and secrets of design
- Case Studies — exciting and detailed stories about our projects
Ten
Starting with today the number of Turbomilkers is a two-digit figure! The staff of our modest company (but with intergalactic ambitions) reached ten! It means that during the last two years the company grew twofold. What does that really mean? It means that more cool icons, fancy interfaces and smart posts are coming out anytime soon!
GTDInbox 2.0 is out
Two month ago I wrote about my experience with GTDInbox. Now it is my pleasure to announce that Andy Mitchell has released GTDInbox 2.0!
Fancy 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.
Enlarge your icons
A small icon is OK! It’s nothing to be ashamed of; it’s not a big deal. Icons can even be very small or plain tiny. This has been their iconic fate. For many years it was the reality and everyone was happy. But something went wrong. All of a sudden, icons got big!
Correcting mistakes
When I wrote the article 10 mistakes in icon design, I did not expect it would arouse so much interest. Clearly, who would want to read about icons?! But I was wrong. Visitor statistics that usually make for somewhat dry and boring reading suddenly erupted: 93,386 visitors in a day!
10 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…
My GTD experience: emptying my inbox with GTDInbox
It was a year and a half ago, my head brimming with ideas about GTD, when I realized that an efficient system of self-organization based on the principles of GTD would make most sense if built around the email client; simply because the vast majority of incoming material requiring attention is delivered via email.
Olympic icons
Fish, Giant Panda, Flame, Tibetan Antelope and Swallow are the heroes of our new free set of icons. No, we have not gone mad. These are the mascots of the Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing this summer. And also these characters represent the five Olympic Rings, hence their corresponding coloring.
My GTD experience: emptying your head
I wanted to share my own experience in organizing my life in accordance with GTD for a very long time. You have most likely heard about the GTD. However you have probably missed the book under the same name. I would definitely recommend everyone to read this book. Nevertheless I will try to tell you my story so that some of the methods comprising the theory would be clear to you even without reading the book.
Autokadabra
Thematic Media thought about setting up a social network for motorists, however this was meant to be a special network with some RPG features. It was called Autokadabra.
Season Holidays
Dear clients and friends!
We are happy to inform you on our working schedule over the season of holidays. Our office closes December 29 to reopen January 9 next year. We will be anxiously waiting until after the holidays for you precious orders and correspondence!
Firefox 3’s Icons
Alex Faaborg lifted the veil of mystery from Firefox 3's icons. Hmmm… Do you like them?
Hooray for Olesya!
Our life in TurboMilk is looking like ceaseless festival. We all are in holiday mood. But today we have yet another cause for joy and exultation! Happy birthday, Olesya!
Kortunov is 28
TurboMilk congratulates cheerfully one of it's knock-out fathers. Happy birthday, dear Denis!
The 5th Anniversary
We are happy to announce that December 1 marks the 5th anniversary of TurboMilk! By the way, do you notice anything new? Look around you. Yes! We got ourselves a new site! See how pretty it looks! It now hosts a nice little portfolio and the blog features a journal with snappy updates. All in all, life is great!
All you wanted to know about TurboMilk but were too shy to ask
Our zealous readers must remember how we hosted our dear guests from Dominion this July. And prior to that we had paid a visit to that wonderful studio ourselves where we were treated with some tea and a Q&A session. So, what kind of questions can site builders have to interface designers? Luckily we got all the moves on paper and nothing will prevent us from sharing it.
Pixel Office
We have an awesome office and we’re proud of it. Location for example is the best possible — the centre of the city, the beautiful bank of Volga river. A way to work is just winsome. And the inside is good too — glassed walls, high ceiling, a giant window with sailing ships and Jiguly mountains behind it.
How to change icons: guidelines for inducing coziness
It would not come as a surprise for you that a man always tries to arrange his living within the bounds of his personal idea of beauty: the Amber Room or new IKEA rug, freshly painted cave painting next to the fireplace or a stuffed stuffed sword fish in the conference room — no principal difference here. The motive is always the same.
TurboMilk is happy to help the mankind in its aspiration to make the world a better place and to increase the enthropy to a whole new league. Do you remember our outstanding collections of free icons?
Some still ask how they can change one icon to another. The answer is easy. The most complex thing about it is to come up with a name for a sleepy walrus and what about that golden altar from the Monsters set. Let's suggest that our test object is the Annual Reports folder.
Continue your reading in True Stories Archive.
Latest comments
Optimizing Adobe Illustrator: thrusting to the Earth orbital velocity
kaiser: when i got my site finished, i´ll get back to you guys, because there are some other things that should change pretty fast. e.g. gradient-tool and …
Designing an iconic language
kaiser: Very good article. thanks for sharing your know how!
Enlarge your icons
tobias: I think we will need bigger Icons as soon as monitors with 200 DPI or more will be widely used. P.S. Vector icons are on the Linux Desktop …
Fancy color names or Royal Blue
kontur: I definately get your point, and also agree, that sometimes it would enhance language's descriptive value not to speak in cmyk and rgb values (not …
10 Mistakes in Icon Design
shaah.myopenid.com: I wonder, why it isn't possible to see new comments. Democracy.