Hicksdesign recently created a new application icon for PlanGrid, an iPad app for storing and viewing blueprints for the construction industry. Even though blueprints aren’t actually blue these days, its such a familiar piece of imagery that it couldn’t be ignored as a metaphor.
The final design followed the original quite closely (see right), retaining the simple image of a white pictogram on a blueprint background. Instead of the magnifying glass, a stylised version of the loupe was used instead, and construction lines and folded paper effects were added on.
A variety of options were explored, using various magnifying devices and architectural symbols. Here are the vector sketches:
As well as trying out a characterisation of their software, known as ‘GridBot’:
The idea that was most liked however, was the loupe:
The hatched version lost too much impact at smaller sizes, so in the end, the solid version won. xScope mirror was then used to help preview the artwork on devices as I worked. This was particularly useful for getting the stroke weights correct on retina displays, and for testing colour. The blue needed to be much more saturated on iOS than on my desktop screen.
Sorry its taken a while to get around to this, but I’ve finally updated the iOS Application Icon Template for Illustrator to include the new Retina sizes for iPad 3:
Part of the delay was me trying to include all the document icon sizes as well, but these were more complicated, and I’ll do a seperate template for these when I can. The update includes the whopping 1024px size required for the App Store on iPad 3.
I’ve not updated the guides and masks layer to use the super-accurate corner radius. As before, treat this layer just for preview, and hide it before exporting to PNGs. Your exported file should have sharp, not rounded, corners. I recommend using Matthew Ericson’s export script to export the artboards to PNGs. The artboards are labelled following the Apple guidelines, so as long as you don’t add a prefix or suffix, the filename should be right!
I’ve finally submitted my first iOS app to the iTunes App Store! A joint project with Simon Whitaker of Goo Software, the title on the top of the window might hint as to what the app is about. If the app gets approved (don’t know of any reason why it won’t but you never know) there’ll be a detailed post to come…
If you’re designing anything that’ll be viewed on either the iPhone or iPad, you’re going to find LiveView a godsend. It’s been out a couple of years, but I only discovered it this week.
It comes in two parts – a Screencaster app for your Mac, and a companion app for the iPhone/iPad. As you work on the graphics, you can view it live on the device. An essential, and free tool. I shot a quick video on my iPhone to show how it works:
So far, it only seems to be lacking an option top use it in landscape mode.
The final design followed the original quite closely (see right), retaining the simple image of a white pictogram on a blueprint background. Instead of the magnifying glass, a stylised version of the loupe was used instead, and construction lines and folded paper effects were added on.
The Icon Handbook is now available! 
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