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Toolbar Icon Workflow
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Toolbar Icon Workflow


  • Subject: Toolbar Icon Workflow
  • From: Richard Somers <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:19:30 -0600

My current ad hoc work flow for toolbar icons which are geometric in nature.

• Use "Inkscape".

• Use a small canvas size of 28 points wide x 22 points high.

• Try to make sure the ink is generally constrained with the individual point boundaries.

• Save the "Inkscape" file as a pdf.

• Open the pdf in "MakeThumbnail" and create an icns file.

• Use the icns file for the toolbar image.

Short of getting a degree in graphic design or spending money on software or hiring a graphic artist, what can I do that will make better looking toolbar icons?

The pdf art work looks good. The toolbar icons don't look so good, the edges are a little fuzzy. The toolbar icons at regular size are slightly larger than the original pdf.

With an NSButton the pdf file works great and looks great when scaling set to none. When the pdf file is used as the image for the toolbar item, it gets asymmetrically stretched and looks horrible. Thus the reason for converting the pdf to an icns file.

The "MakeThumbnail" application actually makes 9 images from very large to small. The large ones are obviously an overkill for the toolbar.

The Apple Human Interface Guidelines has this to say "Although toolbar icons should conserve screen real estate (32 x 32 pixels is the recommended size), they should be inviting and easy to identify." This is nice to know but doesn't provide much help.

--Richard

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