Comments on: Gray Icons

By: Cam Banks

Cam Banks — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:50:16 +0000

How about Circle, Triangle (pointed down), Star?

By: NMcCoy

NMcCoy — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:05:41 +0000

Whoops, it ate my image? Here: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/381295/egg_symbols.png

By: NMcCoy

NMcCoy — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:04:59 +0000

Here’s my tinkering:

Now the circle’s looking a bit dull.

By: fred

fred — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:09:01 +0000

I’m not liking the way the shield ends up looking … but I’d agree the diamond is the least satisfying of the three. Will have to play with it some more.

By: fred

fred — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:33:49 +0000

Hmmm, shield. Okay. I’ll tinker.

By: Harald Wagener

Harald Wagener — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:15:59 +0000

I’d makew the diamond something more shield-like, which conveys “encounter” better for me than the abstract diamond. Love the circle and sun, though.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:45:41 +0000

I think the circle / diamond / sun progression works very nicely. Good progression of complexity while keeping it readable at the small size.

By: Jonathan Walton

Jonathan Walton — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:29:16 +0000

Nice, Fred!

By: fred

fred — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:05:19 +0000

Playing off NMcCoy’s suggestion, I’m looking at something like this now:

These resize down to “font height” nicely, and I think they present a clear progression. Also, the Daily icon (on the right) resembles a sun, which fits into the “Day” concept of Daily pretty well. Here’s a more size-appropriate representation:

By: fred

fred — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:47:38 +0000

Not bad, NMcCoy! I’ll chew on that for sure — shrinking down an already small icon to half its height to compose the At-Will is definitely proving frustrating.

By: NMcCoy

NMcCoy — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:45:42 +0000

Several different collectible games I know of (I think it started with Pokemon) use a circle, a diamond, and a star for “common”, “uncommon”, and “rare” respectively. This seems to map very readily onto power distribution, encompasses both the “simplicity” and “significance” criteria, and would offer an easy mapping for those familiar with such games. You could add a shading element as well to pick up on the “color weight” of existing power headers – the circle would be hollow, diamond could have nested diamonds inside it, and star would be solid black.

By: fred

fred — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:39:29 +0000

Yeah, I agree about the barbs, Sasha. Like I said, the basic geometry of the icon isn’t settled yet.

Pol — I had the same thought, but hands on the clock come out REALLY tiny when you’re doing them as roughly 14 to 16 point font dingbats.

Matt — I might do that *too*, but I feel like that doesn’t quite do it for me by itself. You also create some “disunity” in the presentation, as the text on the darker backgrounds needs to be white, while the text on the white background needs to be black (whereas the current gig with all of the color equivalents is white text on a colored background).

By: Sasha Bilton

Sasha Bilton — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:35:16 +0000

I think the barbs need to be thickened a little because of the size of the at-will icons

By: Matthew J Hanson

Matthew J Hanson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:32:29 +0000

I still like colors, but in black and white, they could be black, white, and gray. Black of course would be daily. I’d lean towards white for daily and gray for encounter.

By: Pol Jackson

Pol Jackson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:25:53 +0000

How about that arrangement, but use clock faces? Random times for the “At-Will”, 3 and 9 o’clock for the “Encounter”, and “five minutes ’til midnight” for “Daily”. The idea being, At-Wills are done whenever, Encounters are done less often, and Dailies are saved for the endgame.

Just a pre-caffine thought.

By: fred

fred — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:13:11 +0000

I’m not settled on the icon itself, but the arrangement’s looking something like this right now:

By: rob

rob — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:31:23 +0000

Clearly, the answer that gets you both awesomeness and a differing number of points is SWORDCHUCKS!

-Rob D.

By: Sasha Bilton

Sasha Bilton — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:05:27 +0000

My pennies-worth would be to keep the same symbol set for all power types. I do like the pyramid stacking idea and the starburst is just fine. Also, skulls might be fun, but possibly too complex at such a small scale. Open hands, which was my other thought, might also be too difficult at scale.

I’d really like to use a common cross-company set for Axe Initiative stuff, so making it open source would be awesome.

By: fred

fred — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:30:34 +0000

I will almost certainly make the font publicly available and free of charge or restriction, once I settle on the right iconography.

Hmmm, I wonder — it might be interesting to consider TWO kinds of icon sets: one using the swords (pointing left to right instead of up to down like the attack icons) for attack powers, another using something else for utility powers. But that might be too much pain.

By: justin

justin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:23:43 +0000

@Daniel: Swords is a neat idea. My only concern is any sort of subtle confusion relating to the existing attack type icons, e.g., melee and melee basic. @Sasha: Great idea! Yes, I'm sure we would in keeping with our philosophy of creating an open environment that runs parallel to but does not directly compete with the GSL. (See, Gods.)