Icons design 101: The New York Times New Iphone Icons

You should check this blog post: it shows how the New York Times designed the new icons for their Iphone application.
This is always a difficult work, between creativity, simplicity and clarity.

the front page Today the iPhone/ nytimes app releases. I've drawn GUI before but this one was special. For my news of choice and another chance to work with renowned web wizard Khoi Vinh and designer Caryn Tutino.

Con go figure Here is the secondary, ancillary pitstop where you configure out what you want most.

More They had to work in old Grey Lady grey scale as well as black and white in 29X29 pixels. Once approved, the png art was integrated into the app (which is free btw).

icons in prog GUI is an ugly process, but an interesting one. Pixel reduction is a nice diversion from drawing my linear crap. I mean "art". here is a peek inside some of the process, which was considerably smooth.

morbid sketches there were some interesting things (concessions?) that happened along the way. Most notably, and my favorite was the icon for Heller's favorite gig, that of the Obituary section. I went straight to the grave initially. "Too morbid" they said. Then we landed on a single flower in front of the gravestone. Done. But wait. A week later the editors came back; "still too morbid". So we went with a single flower. I am still curious if a flower denotes death. I guess we'll wait to see if anyone finds offense.

done and done and here are the final "ready for prime time players". It was weird seeing them for the first time live on my iPhone. Would love to hear what you think of this often ignored form of information illustration.

Blogged with the Flock Browser