Icon designer Kevin Andersson

Update:

Tuaw made a small review of the new version of Byline, and it looks like they liked the new icons. The appleblog also made a really positive review.

I have been working on a few icons and illustrations for an iPhone application called Byline, made by Phantom Fish. Byline is a Google RSS reader, for your iPhone or iPod touch. Byline also has some nice offline reading abilities, check it out, you can find it here in the iTunes Store.

As usual the collaboration went very good, and we exchanged some ideas before starting the project.

Four interface icons were created, as well as a wooden backdrop:

New item (like the standard blue blob in mail)
Starred items (a simple star)
Notes (a pencil)
Folders (a folder)

The process is the same as always, the client ask for a bunch of icons, and I stars sketching them out. A lot of time is used on getting to know the expectations of the client, and I don’t stop working on the icons until the client is 100% happy. In this case, Phantom Fish was great. They knew what kind of icons they wanted, and they had some ideas of how they should look like.

Even though the icons are only 40 x 40 pixels in the final resolution, I always create a higher resolution template, to work in all details. Everything is created using vectors, so it both scales well and it is easy to edit when It comes to making the smaller sizes.

As a small service I decided to create the toolbar icons as well, but they are not used in the final release – as they have been redesigned by another designer earlier.

I had quite clear ideas about the designs I wanted for this project, but it’s always difficult to communicate exactly what’s in your head to another person. Kevin was a pleasure to work with — his rapid and incisive response to feedback meant that we very quickly began to hone in on the look I was after, which made the hard graft of the process seem effortless and gave us plenty of time to focus on the details.

Milo Bird,
Phantom Fish

Here you see the final layout of one of the screens in Byline. If you have any questions, or would like to know more about the process, just post a comment below

If you need a icon or interface designer for freelance work you can contact me by email: graphics[at]kevindersson.dk

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