Crafting Icons
elischiff.com
elischiff.com
It's just that skeuomorphism is out of fashion at the moment so this style look a bit dated.
Icons are mostly represented as visually interesting identifying artifacts about your product. That's why we call app icons _icons_.
The "icons" within the interface of that app, things that might tell you a menu is present or that a group of users is online, are symbols. Glyphs often conform to content. A good example of a glyph is an emoji or dingbats.
On the other hand, I do believe that most of these illustrations are way too detailed to properly function as icons. Styles and trends can change, but unless the author is working with a different meaning of the word "icon", they are always intended to be displayed at medium-small to tiny scales, staying instantly recognizable between a row of different icons.
They are beautiful illustrations absolutely, but I'd not use them as icons. I would use illustrations like this maybe for the front cover of a manual or brochure, perhaps a nice wall-painting(/print) at my office's reception, that kind of thing.
Now I haven't watched the videos (who here has?), so it's possible that some of these artists actually made less detailed and smaller versions of their designs, and it's just the largest one that's showing off in the display frame (it's actually not a very informative article on the whole, IMHO :) ).
BTW I've seen the term "skeuomorph" thrown around this thread a few times, but it's not a synonym for "photorealistic". Icons on themselves don't generally have skeuomorphs in normal apps or OS's, however they are more common in videogames. And when they do it usually pertains not to what they're a picture of, but to their function as icons, e.g. a paper tag/label, road/wall/door sign, icon (in religious sense), charm/bead, pill design, etc. In which case I'd argue the skeumorph is still more part of the UI than the icon design itself.
[0] counting "flat design" and "material design" icons as pretty much the same things here, when you compare them to the much more photo-realistic icons we had before.
Number 5 does the best job in conveying his claim.
1. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54bb4cfce4b045585ada36...
2. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54bb4cfce4b045585ada36...
3. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54bb4cfce4b045585ada36...
4. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54bb4cfce4b045585ada36...
5. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54bb4cfce4b045585ada36...
Each part links to the next at the bottom.
#1: victim of 'flat design' fad
#2: another victim of 'flat design' - remember when 'shine' was the fashion? we now have 'shine fatigue'
#3: i18n version works for all languages, plus any day that is not Monday the 4th
#4: which is better depends on use case
#5: newer icon has much clearer semantics. old icon looks pretty... but doesn't suggest 'adding' (assuming both icons are meant to mean the same thing)
It seems to me that fashion is more responsible for the changing in icon than an erosion of skill. Certainly for #3, more thought and effort went into the icon on the right. We will soon move on from flat design, and people will claim that the next fashion trend is now the 'best ever'...
This claim (that the skill is being left unexercised and untaught) is one I would disagree with: these things are getting created, whether or not they're getting created as "icons." Depicting terrain and objects and inventories in a lot of video games require exactly the same skill, for example.
In my opinion, flat design was "invented" as a cost saving measure. In fact the design of all other things around us follows a similar pattern - complexity and "vestigial" features are being reduced.
Maybe I am cynical, but it's easier to hire couple students filling outlines all day than to have proper artists that can do coloring, shading..
This happened to architecture and interior decoration before. We have a nice railing in my house (Prague, middle class appartment block from 1890s) that would be too expensive to replace today, you would be lucky to find a blacksmith who can do that.
Apparently, it was a normal thing 120 years ago. How come that with all the technology we have today, we can afford intricately crafted designs less and less? My only explanation is economic - people are cheap and so-called "simple" design is good enough. I think we are losing something. Instead having people skilled in craft we have them either unemployed or having some bullshit office jobs (I am no exception btw).
Flat icons may not take as much effort to make (which is debatable... in some cases, they take even more thought to create since you have to think about every little line and curve) but they do get their point across a lot faster and more effective than a fancy, shaded, intricate icon with tiny little details. In my opinion, if you can't easily draw an icon on a piece of paper in a few minutes, it's not a very good icon- it's more of a picture or a drawing.
And I'm going to stop here, because people are going to downvote the hell out of me. Design can be something very divisive.
This (blue + simple, light shape) trend was taken to such extreme that nowadays I feel discomfort looking at the screen with FB, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, IFTTT, Dropbox, Skype etc.
> Your mind shouldn't have to interpret colors, light sources, shading, depth
You have the cart before the horse here. Your mind already does that. There are lots of perceptual tricks that designers can use to enhance their work, all due to the way the visual system works. Certainly an icon can be too busy, but sometimes adding those items makes things easier to digest. For example, consider a 'buy' button that's a flat, single colour, versus one that has a gradient that makes it 'pop out' from the screen a little.
A good icon, just like a good logo, causes a small visual play in the back of one's mind. For that to happen, a lot of design time is spent in exploration, sketching perceptual cons, cross-pollenations and optimizations.
I respect Eli, but I'd hate to see this part of icon design survive, while genuine creativity vanes.