Rockstar Icon Designer - Kate McInnes [47]
Technical Breakdown
Sizes: 48px for Desktop and Dialogue, 32px, 24px and 16px for Programs and Explorer.
.ICO files are required to have 48, 32 and 16px icons in 32, 8 and 4-bit color depths.
Colors Used: Vibrant blue tones with gold and green supporting colors. A more specific color table, including RGB values can be found in the MSDN guidelines.
Viewing Angles Used: An “isometric” style with the main object facing to the right, a slight vanishing point can be drawn to the right of the icon. Document Icons, Warning Icons and Single Objects should be drawn with zero perspective.
Light Source: Top left side of the object. 16px icons have no drop shadow.
Format: ICO, BMP
Aero – Windows Vista and 7
The Aero style is light and glossy with plenty of glass effects.
"The Aero aesthetic creates a high quality and elegant experience that facilitates user productivity and even drives an emotional response." - MSDN
Aero is the name given to the default theme used in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Created to be a more polished and professional user environment than previous versions of Windows, Aero includes large scale icons and an extensive use of transparency and visual effects.
The size of the Aero icons range from 16px to 256px, but due to their size, the 256px icons are rarely used with current computers. The large scale icons are part of the specifications as future monitors and display devices are expected to support 240 to 320 DPI resolutions. Including the large scale icons will insure that programs made for Windows 7 and Vista won't have to be redesigned specifically for new devices.
The 256 pixel icons are made from compressed PNGs to greatly reduce the file size of the icon resource. Without the compressed 256px PNG format, a typical icon file can be up to three times larger than an uncompressed file. An icon editor such as IconWorkshop and Microangelo will allow you to include compressed PNGs as part of the .ico file, older editors may not include this function.
Note: Windows 7 and Vista style compressed PNG icons are compatible with windows versions 2000 to XP as the larger sizes will be bypassed by the program leaving the smaller scale icons to render as intended, in even earlier versions of windows, such as Windows 98, the icon won't render at all and will be replaced by a default system icon.
Technical Breakdown
Sizes: Aero has a maximum icon size of 256px and required icon sizes are 16, 32, and 256 pixels. Optional sizes are 24, 48, 64, 96, and 128. Windows platforms before Windows 2000 cannot process icon files that are larger than 72px in size.
.ICO files are required to have 48, 32 and 16px icons in 32, 8 and 4-bit color depths.
Colors Used: Aero colors are less saturated than previous Windows platforms and use a variety of gradient and transparency effects. There's no specific color sets to use with this platform. Alert colors such as red, green and yellow should be used sparingly in Toolbar and application icons.
Viewing Angles Used: An isometric style with the main object facing to the left, a slight vanishing point can be drawn to the right of the icon. Document Icons, Warning Icons and Single Objects should be drawn with Zero perspective.
Light Source: Icons drawn with perspective have a light source from the top left side, slightly to the front of the object and a 30 – 50% opacity drop shadow drawn slightly behind and to the back of the object. For flat style icons the drop shadow is set to 130 degrees with an opacity between 20 – 50% black with a 0% spread and a distance of about 1 – 3px and a size of 1 – 3px depending on the size and complexity of the icon. 16px icons have no drop shadow.
Format: ICO, PNG
Mac OS X
Mac OS X uses a theme called Aqua