Designing iPhone icons
TAGS: apple, design, icon, iPhone, Mobile, tips
The idea
One of the most important reason to buy or not to buy an iPhone app is the icon. Why? It will represent the app in the App Store and on the home screen. Also the importance of the icon metaphor can not be underestimated if you want your app to standout from the other apps.
The best method to start from, is to keep it as simple as possible because you only have 3249 pixels to fill a 57x57 canvas. So try to bring down your app’s main goal into one idea or image before starting the magic.
How to
First off all you will need to create a 57x57 and 512x512 version of your icon.
The small one is intended to fit on the home screen and the large one will be for the App Store and promotional reasons. From my experience I suggest you start with the small icon; it is much easier to create a large icon from a smaller one then reverse.
A second thing you need to keep in mind is the gloss on your icon. Apple uses a default layer of gloss but you can turn it off ( native icon & web icon) and create your own. Personally, as a designer, I don’t like the default gloss because it is just a lazy excuse to make your icon fit the style of rest of the default apps.
Another thing you have to be aware of is the rounded corners on the icon. This is done by default and can not be changed, so make sure that your icon is prepared for this.
To make life a little bit easier I created some default Photoshop files where you can start from. I hope you will like them !
