Analyzr - Help Choose an Icon

None of these icons are finished. They're all kind of a "work-in-progress." For example, for the "sideways" one the shadowing and lighting isn't right because it's just an SD card rotated 90 degrees.

But I'm curious what people like. Remember we have two versions: Home and Pro.

64 pixels - http://analyzrgolf.com/64.png
128 pixels - http://analyzrgolf.com/128.png
256 pixels - http://analyzrgolf.com/256.png
512 pixels - http://analyzrgolf.com/512.png

64 and 256 here for comparison (click the other sizes above if you want to see them):




From left to right we'll call them "Metal" and "Sideways" and "Upright."

Here they are in the dock:

http://analyzrgolf.com/dock.png


For Metal, I don't know what we'd do for Home. For Sideways we're somewhat limited, though we could change the color of the SD card for the two different versions. For Upright, we can do that or we can change the color of the label from green to orange for Home and Pro.

Update: Added dock view.

That's what we'd do. Green Pro and Orange Home.

We will definitely NOT mix metal and SD card for Home/Pro.

I've updated the original post with the dock view. If you want to change your vote, that's not really possible, but you can change your vote effectively by posting again.

Shows a revised flat metal - I darkened it, added a bevel and a shadow, and of course it's flat. Also shows two revised Upright ones showing the loss of the LEDs, the Home/Pro variations, a slightly lighter card (mostly towards the bottom), and a black ring to help add contrast to the buttons at 128px and smaller (Green Pro version only in the dock shot below). Here they are in the dock: I think the idea of using metal just tends to wash things out, particularly at smaller sizes.

See I think the card almost looks like a bit of a... It looks like a "device" - almost like a futuristic Star Trek tablet - and then only when you look closely (and probably only at larger sizes) do you notice it's actually an SD card. Kind of like an inside joke since most cameras these days shoot video on an SD card.

Additionally, we're making strides on the other types of icons as well. For example:



We're also going to try this in the Sideways one - that might marry the "Star Trek tablet" with the simpler, revised interface.

Poll is somewhat irrelevant now.

Here are some updates showing the now four possible choices. Stretch may very well like one or two of them.

First the icons at two sizes: 120 and 240 (and yes, we can set different icons for various sizes to simplify things in smaller versions):




Here's the URLs to them directly PLUS a 420 pixel version:
http://analyzrgolf.com/120.png
http://analyzrgolf.com/240.png
http://analyzrgolf.com/420.png

Here's what they look like in the dock ( http://analyzrgolf.com/dock_4.png):


I'm sure you can see what was done in these images. Let me know what you like now... even if you already have. Things have changed enough, I'm sure you'd agree.

Devil's advocate...

You're overthinking it. Transmit - an FTP client - is an image of a moving truck. Mail is an image of a postage stamp - you don't literally use the stamps.

Our app doesn't make golfers appear as orange and green silhouettes, nor does it load data from physical film strips. Very few icons do exactly what their icons imply - the trick is to get the implications in the right region.

Some applications do.

Besides, the name of the application would not be included in smaller versions of the icon. When the name is too small to read, we'd simply remove it. Besides, SD cards have writing on them, so it'd be odd NOT to have anything written on an SD card. As for other icons with writing, I didn't even have to get past "A" in my applications folder: Even TextEdit was famous for having actual writing on it - writing that people deciphered .

It doesn't have to be about that only, and if the writing helps it to remain more like the actual object, then I'd argue that leaving the writing off makes it worse and less "iconic."

I can safely say that's not going to happen. Our inspiration for the icon was Apple Loops Utility, and if we just have a piece of metal with two big screens or holes in it the thing might very well look like a sink.

The golfers disappear in smaller sizes. They have to because they turn into blobs.

Personally, I'm leaning towards the horizontal SD card at this point. We can change the color of the SD card to show Home or Pro. It looks like a Star Trek futuristic tablet (which is what "Current" is supposed to be) but has a bit of an "inside joke" with the fact that it's an SD card. It makes better use of space than the "Current" version. Rub, btw, I was just playing devil's advocate. I think you raise some good points, but in the end my true feelings are indeed closer to what I've said above here.

In the end I think it's going to come down to what Dave likes of the four above and what we can do with that icon from there.