Rockstar Icon Designer - Kate McInnes [57]
Title: Pidgin
Description: App icon for an IM client. Inkscape
KM What's the most difficult icon you've ever had to create and why?
JS Usually those that become complex and Inkscape starts choking up. Also things that have geometric repeating patterns you have to make in perspective. We don't really have any perspective tools still, so I usually end up creating a 3D model in Blender and work form there.
Title: user-trash-full
Description: Status icon for a desktop theme. Inkscape
KM What's the most important skill or trait to have for people who want to make icons?
JS My drawing skills are close to non-existent, so I don't think it's that. I am also colorblind, just like my companion Lapo Calamandrei, so it's not that either. I think it boils down to endurance to go through endless iterations. And if you happen to be trying for over 10 years, some good stuff comes out eventually. :)
KM What's the biggest mistake you can make when creating icons, and how can people avoid it?
JS In most cases the biggest mistake is creating an icon at all. Steven Garrity made it a law, saying that if an obvious metaphor cannot be found, the functionality is better exposed without an icon. Many projects have icon overload, creating visual noise rather than making it faster to scan through the interface.
KM Where do you see yourself and the field of icon design in 5 to 10 years time?
JS Free software has matured and people are more interested in task based design for apps rather than 'painting lipstick on a pig', so creating graphic assets is only a fraction of what I do these days. I doubt I will be creating more icons in the future. I am happy to see the symbolic stencils on the rise again, thanks to the mobile platforms. While the full color high-res illustrations are fun to do, they aren't really icons.
Title: Moblin
Description: Icons for the SUSE variant of the Moblin netbook platform. The app launcher icons were colored and composited automatically using a simple ruby script (all assets are SVG). Inkscape
KM SVG is the basis of many Linux icons. In your opinion what are the advantages and disadvantages of this format? Do you see scalable SVGs taking over as the main icon format in the future?
JS Although SVG is the 'source' format that Inkscape is built upon, with the introduction of high resolution and highly detailed icons, we don't install the icons as SVGs anymore. We use rendered PNGs at runtime. Getting rid of bitmaps in the creation process however, meant it is much easier to create derivative works. So the icon sets we have are also asset libraries we can re-use easily. Another benefit is that SVG is pretty easily parseable so even a rookie script author can do some basic transformations, toggling visibility of layers, re-coloring, compositing, etc.
KM On the topic of icon scales, it's reported that Mac OS Lion will have a maximum icon size of 1024px. Obviously this is going to cause more than a few headaches for designers. Are there any plans to increase the scale of the Tango icon set?
JS All of our high res icons are vectors. So while we might need to add a detail or two, the icons are pretty fine rendered at 1024x1024px when the time comes it would actually have some use.
Title: Network Printer
Description: Device icon for a base theme. Inkscape
KM Do you have any advice or tips for people wanting to break into the field of icon design?
JS I started creating icons as a pure hobby. Today there is a ton of super talented artists, so creating a convincing portfolio today is probably a lot harder than it was 12 years ago. Focusing on icon design alone would probably be too narrow sighted today.
Looking around the Android marketplace or even the iOS app store shows that there is still a huge need for icon designers. My rule of thumb is to do what you enjoy and what you feel like improving.