An icon

Posted by Máirín Duffy ⋅ April 5, 2010 ⋅ 9 Comments

With the help of seasoned GNOME artists Lapo Calamandrei, Hylke Bons, and Jakub Steiner, I was able to create the following GNOME-y icons:

I used the already-existing clock icon, stripped down it down to its bare face, and layered the fuel gauge type stuff on top. I don’t often get the chance to create icons (certainly not at all the sizes pictured here) and I’m hoping to get better at it. Of course I still have to try my hand at a high-res (256x256px) version… 🙂

The Inkscape SVG source is available.

About Máirín Duffy

Máirín is a principal interaction designer at Red Hat. She is passionate about software freedom and free & open source tools, particularly in the creative domain: her favorite application is Inkscape. You can read more from Máirín on her blog at blog.linuxgrrl.com.

View all posts by Máirín Duffy »

Discussion

9 thoughts on “An icon”

Ooh, nice. There’s something about that green full one that’s oddly reassuring.
BTW, the title field in the source is still set to Clocks. Surely Gauges would be more appropriate now?

Posted by Marc | April 5, 2010, 10:24 pm
- Ah good point, I should fix that 🙂
  
  Posted by mairin | April 6, 2010, 8:12 am
Certainly better than I could do. 🙂 Some criticisms from someone with no chops in the craft: The smaller icons are a bit crowded even with the small-size customizations you’ve made; I’m guessing they’d be improved without the gas pump. Why does the gas pump have have different handedness in one of the versions? Why aren’t they all “left-handed” pumps?

Posted by Jeff Walden | April 6, 2010, 2:27 am
- Hey thanks for the feedback 🙂 An earlier version didn’t have the gas pump icon, and folks were confused about what the icon was. Guesses ranged from ‘thermostat’ to ‘radiation detector’. Once I put the gas gauge icon it was much clearer for folks. Sometimes I shifted the handedness so that in the limited pixel space I had, between the gas pump arm and the pin on the gauge, both were clear. I may be weird but the first thing I tend to throw out it consistency in light of other things… I know some folks would never do that. The problem is I couldn’t move the pin, it’d completely change the meaning, but I could move the gauge pump arm without changing the meaning.
  
  Posted by mairin | April 6, 2010, 8:15 am
  - Just a thought; could you maybe lower the pin closer to the bottom of the gauge? It doesn’t swing a full 360 like a clock hand, so it doesn’t need to be in the center. I think some real gauges are like that. Of course the arm would be longer and have a different angle, so might still be on the way….
    
    Anyway; random and belated thought…. Looks good!
    
    Posted by n8willis | May 3, 2010, 1:43 pm
Very nice! Are these for a specific app?

Posted by Jer | April 6, 2010, 11:08 am
- They’re for an internal project, but you can feel free to use the artwork under the usual GNOME icon licenses.
  
  Posted by mairin | April 6, 2010, 11:15 am
Nice work. While you’re on it can you also please make a new icon for gconf-editor? I don’t know why it’s not updated for years even after Tango era.

Posted by Baris | April 6, 2010, 2:50 pm
- Actually it looks like lapo has a new one in our repo. It looks pretty slick.
  
  Posted by mairin | April 6, 2010, 5:15 pm