CoverFlow icon
Saturday, May 20, 2006 01:00 
Andrew did a blog post in December 2004 describing his idea for a new way to go trough an iTunes digital music library. In what I would call a perfect colaboration Jonathan decided to write the application Andrew described. The result is simply astounding, and it's potential still remains to be discovered by many I believe. The idea of being able to visually and easily flip trough your album collection covers, in a way that's completly in sync with how we do it in real life, is just amazing.
As you might know I enjoy helping out project with potential (Camino, Adium, GNUstep) to ensure that their visual representation re-enforces the product as a whole. In the case of CoverFlow their wasn't any work needed on the prestine interface Andrew and Jonathan created, instead the application really lacked a very good application icon. So that's what I went and made for them.
Given the fact that it's just a tool enabling you to find things in a visual way, the icon needed a similar simple approach. It needed to be something that was as visually appealing and smart as the whole applications mataphor and interface. The descision to do the DJ record flight case was made quickly, mainly because that's where the project inspiration came from in the first place.
While working on the icon I came up with the idea to dynamically load the users currently playing albumm cover and composit it on the icon in the dock. It's a small detail but in the bigger picture it just lifts application to a whole new level of sophistication. This is something Jonathan is looking into, it's not yet implemeted sorry, but it should come soon.
Another nice detail is that while normally I do all the work on the icon, I invited Andrew to create all the album cover designs for the icon. Andrew is a graphic designer and so I thought it would be a nice idea to merge some of his work in the icon aswell. And I must say that I really like the way it turned out. Collaborations like these should happen more often.
I'd like to thank Jonathan and Andrew for creating such a wonrderfull application. And I would like to urge them to further develop it. I have the destinct feeling that this way of browsing visual instances is more powerfull then they thought.
For those who can't wait for the Jonathan to update the build with the new icon I prepared a .icns file you can use to use the icon now! Have fun.
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At 1:05 AM,
said. Thankyou! Thankyou! Thankyou! I searched high and low for a replacement icon a couple of months ago, but gave up.
What a great icon for a great app. Well done guys.-
At 2:39 AM, Justin Palmer said.
Beautiful Icon, I am completely envious of you. ;-)
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At 1:27 AM, said.
Very very nice. I kept hoping CoverFlow would get a nice icon to match the very nice-looking interface.
However, personally I prefer the second-to-last version of the icon. The two things I like better about it are
1) No handles on the side. On everything but the largest icon size I find them disrupting. In the preview icon in your post, they looked to me like the bottom edges of LP covers which were stuck in the crate at an angle (which doesn't make sense when the crate has solid sides). In my dock, the size of the icon makes the handles very tiny bumps on the side. Just faint enough to see in a way that interrupts the rest of the icon. It was only when I saw the full version of the icon I realised what they were.
2) I like the yellow music badge. The iTunes one which replaced it in the final version is too small to see clearly at most sizes. The yellow/black shows a bit better (and I like the colour).
As I said, just my personal opinion. Those are minor quibbles however. I think that overall it's a fantastic icon, so great work!-
At 3:24 PM, jharr said.
I like the approach and rendering but the have to say the second to last is better. Trying to get the name of the app in the icon really clutters to image at the sizes most users will see it (sub 128px). Not a single icon in my dock has the app name within the images, seems too forced. The quality is outstanding, I just feel it would be much more recognizable and clear if it were less complex and you blasted the text.
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At 4:05 PM,
Jasper Hauser said. The main reason why we changed from using the white to yellow itunes sticker was that we wanted the app to have a more pro/tool look instead of being very colorfull. But I agree that the yellow sticker is more visible in small views.
The handles: the reaosn why I added them was that a) they exist on the real cases, b) without them the case looked very clean.
Name on Covers: this was a choises made by Andrew, initiatlly i thought he was going to image only covers but he decided to use typography. I guess it's weird in some way, but that disturbing.
I will have a look and see if I can squeese out a icon file of the previous version for those who prefer that.-
At 5:53 PM, Andy Croll said.
This is just beautiful, so nice to remove the slightly not mac-like current logo from my dock!
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At 8:05 PM, Andy Field said.
Excellent - icing on the cake!
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At 8:46 AM, Justin Prine said.
Fantastic work. I had played with creating a replacement icon for it several months back with little success. I could not find a suitable metaphor. The DJ case fits well. Good job guys.
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At 2:40 PM, David Hughes said.
Hi,
It doesn't work for me :-( either copying and pasting into the Get Info view of Coverflow or using Candybar - I just get an icns document as teh icon.
What am I doing wrong?
The icon displays fine on the desktop when I download it.-
At 8:39 PM, said.
David:
Select the CoverFlow application icon, control-click, choose "Show Package Contents," open Contents>Resources, rename Icon.icns "Icon_old.icns" and rename the new icon file "Icon.icns" and move it into that folder. Close up. Launch the app. Voila.-
At 10:25 PM, said.
Hey Ryan, I followed your instructions:
(Select the CoverFlow application icon, control-click, choose "Show Package Contents," open Contents>Resources, rename Icon.icns "Icon_old.icns" and rename the new icon file "Icon.icns" and move it into that folder. Close up. Launch the app. Voila.) and still shows the old icon. Any ideas??
Thanks great program
Matt-
At 11:41 PM, Pilok said.
Hey Matt,
When you have followed the steps described by Ryan, just do:
- control-click "display information" on the coverflow app
- click on icon and do Command + X (sometimes you need to do it 2 times)
You're done!.-
At 6:53 PM, said.
Nice incorpration of the Clash's Sandinista album cover!
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At 2:43 PM, said.
Great icon, but when I put Coverflow in the Dock the icon has a black background, not transparent. Any ideas?
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At 11:38 AM, said.
Love Coverflow, always thought the icon let it down, now I'll be proud to show it off! Thanks!
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At 4:49 PM, said.
still doesnt work for me....your directions like "display information" and "show package contents" are not the same for me.....command-X doesnt do anything either...also, when I first opened the app, certain albums had cover art...when i opened it later, that art went away....any comments?
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At 10:35 PM, paul haine said.
To anybody having problems getting this icon to work, try this:
- Download icns2icon from http://www.icons.cx/goodies/
- Run the application
- Drag your .icns file onto the application
- If it's worked, your icon in the Finder should stop using the generic preview icon and now be using the actual icon image
- CTRL+Click the .icns file and select 'Get Info'
- Click the small icon in the top-left of the info window - it will get a blue highlight if you've done it right
- Click Edit > Copy from the menubar
- Go to Coverflow in your Applications folder
- CTRL+Click the Coverflow.app and select 'Get Info'
- Select the small icon in the top-left
- Click Edit > Paste from the menubar
That should do the job - it's the only way that's worked for me.-
At 9:30 AM, said.
Wow, nice work. I'd use 'im.
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At 1:32 AM, trib said.
Awesome! A great new icon for an equally great app! Thanks!
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At 10:53 AM, Ianus said.
So you just finished this great icon and now it has become obsolete because the app is now integrated in iTunes. But that icon has some controversy surrounding it as well...
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At 4:14 PM, christmas gifts said.
Great work! The idea of having the 'now playing' album on the icon is one that you really should do – it's a small thing, but it would add a lot of sophistication to this excellent idea. I know that iTunes now does something similar to what you're doing here, so I hope you guys come up with something even better.
Mac applications are still the best, eh? We're probably going to have to wait a while before we see something as cool and easy as this for media centre / media player. I'm sure there's something out there that's open source, and they'll probably develop something for VISTA eventually, but still...-
At 7:08 AM, portrait paintings said.
You mentioned about the idea to dynamically load the users currently playing albumm cover and composit it on the icon in the dock. If I have already the icon will it automatically be updated with this feature or will you require us to do a little bit of updates on our own?