As I pointed out previously, I really like every aspect of these icons, from the aqua reflections (how do you do those things?) to the contrast of the flowing vector 'waves' and the fine texturing that makes the whole thing seem to burst with a sort of raw bubbly energy.
Except for the font.
Now that there are more samples to see, I can give a full critique of it. Sorry in advance for rambling.
The main problem lies with the letter weights. For example look at After Effects, what you did was obviously to reduce the point size of the E to make it smaller, unfortunately the thickness also gets reduced, resulting in unequal letter weights (look how much thicker A is). The same goes for InDesign, Flash (it looks like you scaled the "l", which I don't quite understand. And Soundbooth, where you scaled the "b". The rule is that when you scale an uppercase letter down you should increase it's weight-- e.g. semibold, or bold (not faux bold) it to keep the weight consistent. This is known as small caps and is a sign of professional typography. Some fonts have this feature already built in, you can turn it on from the fonts panel in photoshop.
Secondly I notice that very inconsistent letter sizes have been used. I am not sure why, but it seems illogical. For instance, the "w" in Fireworks is much bigger than the "w" in Dreamweaver, although the caps are of roughly the same point size. Even from afar the "Fw" looks distorted. The same goes for Soundbooth-- the lowercase "b" should not be scaled down to look smaller than the "S" (note that in the adobe logos they are of the same height). Also, I think that a consistent font size should be maintained throughout the icons-- for example Illustrator is clearly bigger than Bridge, and the "F" in flash is larger than that in "Fx" (what app is that, by the way? Freehand MX? In that case it should be Fr). They are all part of a set, and should look consistent.
Lastly, I have a few gripes with the font that you are using. It seems to be a rip-off of Futura, and not a very good one at that. The "A", for instance, is far too wide, and so is the "D" and "P" and which look bloated. The style of the "b" does not fit in with the rest of the letters. In fact, I suspect that this is horizontally-stretched Futura. Yecch. Presumably you are aiming for a minimalistic geometric style with the lettering, and I strongly recommend Century Gothic Bold for this. Or Bahaus, if you want to carry it that far.
Sorry again for the lengthy criticism, I had nothing better to do and really like writing these things but they must be a bore for you to read. I really do feel though, that these are the best aqua-styled icons i've come across so far, which is why I felt the font issue is really important for you to sort out. If you do that, they will be absolutely perfect and I wouldn't hesitate to use and promote them.
Oops, I didn't read your reply to my previous post. Sorry. So you did use Futura after all, with 'styles' applied. hmm. I would still recommend Century Gothic, it's really an iconish sort of font.
I saw your other icons, they're really great too, but I think you should perhaps concentrate more on this, it's really something unique and much better in my opinion than your other icons.
And I saw your website too. Sorry if i've been condescending in my above comments, I assumed you were an amateur in typography, not a skilled designer who was too busy to fine-tune it.
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Comments
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-cracking creativity-
[link]
i love the little glow underneath
overall they look so real, you wanna grap and roll them around
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#CSS-Babes | #typoholics | *pica-stock | #VirtualMoleskine
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-cracking creativity-
[link]
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#CSS-Babes | #typoholics | *pica-stock | #VirtualMoleskine
Except for the font.
Now that there are more samples to see, I can give a full critique of it. Sorry in advance for rambling.
The main problem lies with the letter weights. For example look at After Effects, what you did was obviously to reduce the point size of the E to make it smaller, unfortunately the thickness also gets reduced, resulting in unequal letter weights (look how much thicker A is). The same goes for InDesign, Flash (it looks like you scaled the "l", which I don't quite understand. And Soundbooth, where you scaled the "b". The rule is that when you scale an uppercase letter down you should increase it's weight-- e.g. semibold, or bold (not faux bold) it to keep the weight consistent. This is known as small caps and is a sign of professional typography. Some fonts have this feature already built in, you can turn it on from the fonts panel in photoshop.
Secondly I notice that very inconsistent letter sizes have been used. I am not sure why, but it seems illogical. For instance, the "w" in Fireworks is much bigger than the "w" in Dreamweaver, although the caps are of roughly the same point size. Even from afar the "Fw" looks distorted. The same goes for Soundbooth-- the lowercase "b" should not be scaled down to look smaller than the "S" (note that in the adobe logos they are of the same height). Also, I think that a consistent font size should be maintained throughout the icons-- for example Illustrator is clearly bigger than Bridge, and the "F" in flash is larger than that in "Fx" (what app is that, by the way? Freehand MX? In that case it should be Fr). They are all part of a set, and should look consistent.
Lastly, I have a few gripes with the font that you are using. It seems to be a rip-off of Futura, and not a very good one at that. The "A", for instance, is far too wide, and so is the "D" and "P" and which look bloated. The style of the "b" does not fit in with the rest of the letters. In fact, I suspect that this is horizontally-stretched Futura. Yecch. Presumably you are aiming for a minimalistic geometric style with the lettering, and I strongly recommend Century Gothic Bold for this. Or Bahaus, if you want to carry it that far.
Sorry again for the lengthy criticism, I had nothing better to do and really like writing these things but they must be a bore for you to read. I really do feel though, that these are the best aqua-styled icons i've come across so far, which is why I felt the font issue is really important for you to sort out. If you do that, they will be absolutely perfect and I wouldn't hesitate to use and promote them.
Cheers
Oops, I didn't read your reply to my previous post. Sorry. So you did use Futura after all, with 'styles' applied. hmm. I would still recommend Century Gothic, it's really an iconish sort of font.
I saw your other icons, they're really great too, but I think you should perhaps concentrate more on this, it's really something unique and much better in my opinion than your other icons.
And I saw your website too. Sorry if i've been condescending in my above comments, I assumed you were an amateur in typography, not a skilled designer who was too busy to fine-tune it.
....Would be a nice Christmas gift....
Will these be individual icons or wrapped up in something like Icon Packager?
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Throwing some love back to dA -> [link]
Can't wait until you guys release them.
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-cracking creativity-
[link]
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