My first 16×16 icon attempts

Friday Dec 31st 2004

If you look to the right there are now new little itty-bitty icons there. This is my first attempt at decent looking 16×16 icons. Yes I created them from scratch. I think they came out okay.

I found out quickly that the only way to get 16×16 to look good at all is to zoom in and go pixel by pixel - which is what I did. Granted, they look a little “computery” but that’s the whole point. Icons in my opinion should not just be about looking good but also serve its function well. A “contact” or “e-mail” icon should be an image of an envelope. Design icons should have something to do with art, like pencils, pens and so on. Archival functions should have something to do with storing something.

Speaking of the Blog Archive icon.. it’s supposed to look like a piece of paper coming out of a file drawer. That was really hard to do in 16×16. I think I’ve accomplished that.. but you be the judge. Originally my idea was to draw a treasure chest but that did not come out good at all (grin). The standard file cabinet icon had to do. I drew it out as an opened cabinet with a paper sticking out.

Just for grins I made the icons with transparent backgrounds. This was easy to do since none of the icons have anti-aliasing in them. “Magic Wand’ing” the boundaries for the transparent areas was a snap.

I may make some more lil’ icons here and there to kill some time. Maybe. Depends how bored I get. (grin)

rss feed for this article's comments

comments and pings are closed for this article

« Home vs. Apartment prices2005! »