The Xtorrent icon
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 11:59
Now I'm never going to pretend to have created "the" best icon for an application, I always create what I believe in and what the client likes as well. The amount of users for an application such as this one will be so diverse that I will never be able to satisfy them all. Having said that, Xtorrent is the kind of application where you just can not easily depict the application's subject and functionality because what the app does just isn't simple. So creating an icon for this app was challenging both because of the attention it already had because of Davids previous applications and because of the nature of the application.
Not so long ago I wrote an article about Obviousness of an icon where I said the following:
...in a lot of cases (the bigger apps, complex technologies) there simply isn't any easy or simple way to visualize what the app does. In those cases you might just have to come up with a more logo or pictogram like image. Those are the icons that heavily rely on their style.So the treatment of this challenge was pretty clear from the start. First I looked at the already existing bittorrent icon landscape and quickly realized it was one that hadn't had much attention yet. The bittorrent project logo wasn't very usable in my opinion. Secondly I decided early on that I wanted to stay close to the look and feel of the Acquistion icon.
Bittorrent is a file sharing technology. Mostly people see that as being able to download files (leech), but one also has to make a file available to download (feed). One of the key strengths of bittorrent how ever is that every downloadable file consists of small pieces, and as soon as you have successfully downloaded one of the pieces of a file it can be shared to others. Dramatically increasing the speed at wich people can share something.
Fairly quickly I bumped into the thought to just stick with a simple arrow kind of logo type. I have always been a big fan of the iPod shuffle adds and the shuffle pictogram. And finally saw a way to create something slightly similar.
So from the above bits and pieces I deducted 3 aspects I wanted to be in the icon. 1) feed, 2) leech, 3) pieces. The result of this combination is the X logo type. I then combined that with a modular object that displays the Xtorrent pieces status view to create an actual appealing icon.
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- At 8:47 AM, said.
I think I speak for everyone here when I say:
That's a really nice icon (and it seems to be a great app)- At 8:50 AM, said.
Beautiful.
- At 9:56 AM, said.
How about convincing David to "update" his other applications' icons in a similar style?
- At 10:25 AM, said.
I've always admired your work man, but that icon really isn't good at small sizes. I mean compared to your other high quality work. Especially that metal frame at 32 and 48, those edges look just fugly with this angle. And I think you could loose that thin light middle-line after all, because it looks bad even at 128.
Sorry, maybe I stepped out of the bed with the wrong foot :)- At 3:29 PM, said.
Really beautiful. Nice work, and thanks for sharing your comments about the creative process.
- At 4:08 PM, said.
Thanks for the comments so far. I'm always open to comments and I think some of them are more then valid. So I might just tweak some of the details to make it better, I know David will be fine with that.
- At 4:49 PM, said.
Design communication at its finest.
- At 9:32 AM, said.
You know, silly as it sounds I firmly believe someone's impression of how often they use a program actually hinges on the program identity -- the icon and interface. I too was underwhelmed by the existing BitTorrent icons (and actually sought out a replacement from InterfaceLift).
This is astounding. Having done logos for corporate identities and a large number of political campaigns, I appreciate what you mean when you talk about how hard it is to convey file swarming and traffic without botching it. I especially love the defrag-esque background pattern and the natural progression of fading and stuttering the arrows in to symbolize the acquiring of files. This latter point is probably the whole key to how well it works.
Congrats on a job well done.- At 10:10 AM, said.
There is, however, a lot of stairstepping in the diagonals that detract from the appearance.
- At 11:29 AM, said.
Yea, I really like the icon, but have to admit that at sizes smaller than 128x128 the metal edge doesn't look great (sorry for criticising, I love your work).
If it isn't possible to clean up good enough at the smaller sizes how about making those face on & tilted at an angle? (like Acquisition, Mail etc.)- At 1:01 PM, said.
Personally, I would have preferred seeing just the arrows X, without the console thingy it's in. The X gives me a powerful impression, and I'd just love to see how it might look on its own.
- At 4:27 PM, said.
That's a lovely icon but I think that some of the criticism is valid. The key iconographic shape of the arrows is spot on, but it probably only occupies 1/4 of the available pixels. Might it not work better without a container? Or with a different, smaller container?
- At 11:18 PM, said.
Indeed, it's a very nice icon but i don't really understand when you say: "I wanted to stay close to the look and feel of the Acquistion icon"... I can't find anything related between them (the shiny top, maybe?)... sorry but i've always thought Acquisition icon is ugly; this one it's beautiful...
- At 11:17 PM, said.
It's a darn nice icon. I'm very impressed.
Now we just need to convince Lemke to redesign the GraphicConvertor icon set!- At 5:04 PM, said.
Very cool. I like it.
- At 11:01 PM, said.
What can i say... Nice icon, but bigger size is more beautiful.
- At 6:30 AM, said.
Too bad xtorrent is a pile of crap
(same for acquisition) and anyone
buying it is a sucker.- At 7:26 PM, said.
very nice web site, great information, nice icon, thanks funtote. http://www.funtote.com