Sutro Tower Sunset Time-Lapse (by patrickgibson and Me)

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:44:45 -0400

My hands. Also I made this.

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:54:11 -0500

My hands.

Also I made this.

Brooding Wood - Available for iPad

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:46:22 -0400

Brooding Wood - Available for iPad

Delicious Battle - Made for Wil Shipley

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:00:00 -0400

Delicious Battle - Made for Wil Shipley

Core Elegance - Available in iPad and 1440 X 900

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 15:13:00 -0400

Core Elegance - Available in iPad and 1440 X 900

RoseGlobe - Available on the App Store SnoGlobe - Available on the App Store

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:31:00 -0500

RoseGlobe - Available on the App Store

SnoGlobe - Available on the App Store

Core Elegance

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:21:00 -0500

Available in 1440 X 900

Victorian FanBoi

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:58:00 -0500

Available in 1440 X 900 and 2560 X 1440

Designing the NetNewsWire 3.2 icon

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:52:00 -0400

Here’s the process I went through making the NetNewsWire 3.2 icon. Everyone knows it’s tradition for 0.2 releases to get a new icon, so when Brent asked me to make him one I was excited.

It all started off with some sketches on the free paper I got from the Pickwick Hotel at WWDC. I decided early on that I didn’t want the icon to have a planet. I wanted to change the shape and make it more unique.

Note about first sketches:

RSS logo maybe? Nah.

Brent with a Pilsner glass? Nah.

This is me playing with other shapes. All I’m trying to do here is get the idea floating around in my brain. I’m trying to find a good outline.

I decided on this design. I was happy at this point, but Brent seemed to think it needed a little more work (O rly? Grayscale 3D vector art isn’t good enough?). At first I was going to have it pointing down, but quickly changed direction — it felt impotent and sad pointing down. I did these outlines in Adobe Illustrator using 3D rotate and revolving an outline. Once the shapes were made I could twist and turn them any way I wanted.

I ended up deciding it was best to have it pointing up. I liked the shape better and it felt happier. Here’s me exploring that icon shape a little more. This is what I ended up with in Illustrator, before turning it over to Photoshop.

This pic has most of the shapes complete, but without all the love added. Brent’s only requirement was for it to look cool, so I worked with a lot of textures, shading, and light. Every little object and surface has some bit of texture in it, even if its just a little bit of noise.

Around this point, I decided to also start working on the iPhone version. So they could both be floating around in my head at the same time. I took the idea of the blue solar panel grids and threw it into an icon. A fine background for something, but not an icon by itself.

This was the point I decided to do those cool swirls. It started out as the RSS logo, then departed slightly. I enjoyed working for different platforms while creating these icons. It gave me a new set of constraints and made me think about the problem differently. I could take some of those things and put them back together with the desktop icon to make them both better.

I made a 2D satellite that complimented the desktop icon and threw it on the icon I made earlier.

The solar panel was too busy, so I put it in an orbit around the earth.

I went back in and made the big version of the iPhone icon, and made all the littler versions of the desktop icon. Each one gets massaged a little, layers get thrown away, things are redrawn. It eventually gets down to the 16 X 16 pixel ones. They’re so cute and little! This is where good color choice and shape pay off the most.

If I had just shrunk down the 512 version of the icon it would have looked like the mini icon on the right. While it’s technically an accurate scale of the bigger icon I made, it blurs and confuses the shapes I’m trying to get you to understand. The one on the right is much easier to look at, and looks cooler at that size.

The last step was to create a version without the orange signal for when a badge is displayed on the icon. The clash of orange and red was atrocious, this makes it much better.

Many thanks to Brent and the rest of the Sheep for their advice throughout the process. If anybody has questions or comments, email (address in website footer) or tweet at me: @BradEllis

Brad's Desk Oct. 2009

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:41:27 -0400

Hipster Brad

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:41:00 -0400

NO! THE ONE TO THE RIGHT!

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:40:00 -0400

VoodooPad's Bucket Spills

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:39:00 -0400

Billy Mays Keyboard

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:37:00 -0400

Tatooine

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:18:00 -0400

Code name Tatooine - Black Pixel

VoodooPad

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:24:00 -0400

VoodooPad - Flying Meat Software

NetNewsWire

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:08:00 -0400

NetNewsWire - NewsGator

Intersecting Paths

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:56:00 -0400

Intaglio print on cotton paper

Musings

Sutro Tower Sunset Time-Lapse (by patrickgibson and Me)

My hands. Also I made this.

Brooding Wood - Available for iPad

Delicious Battle - Made for Wil Shipley

Core Elegance - Available in iPad and 1440 X 900

RoseGlobe - Available on the App Store SnoGlobe - Available on the App Store

Core Elegance

Victorian FanBoi

Designing the NetNewsWire 3.2 icon

Brad's Desk Oct. 2009

Hipster Brad

NO! THE ONE TO THE RIGHT!

VoodooPad's Bucket Spills

Billy Mays Keyboard

Tatooine

VoodooPad

NetNewsWire

Intersecting Paths