Icon design is a precise art: a blend of aesthetics and readability that takes a long time to master. But by the same token, it’s also incredibly rewarding, and with the right starter’s advice, it can make the whole process much easier for a beginner. Pixelresort author Michael Flarup has republished his article, “The Making of an Icon”, here for MacThemes readers today. We hope you enjoy it!
Got the Leopard customization bug? While we wait for more to develop on the Leopard front, forum member OneLeggedStanley has done us all a favor by writing up an iTunes 7 theme creation guide. It’s concise and to the point, laying out every step you need to push your beautiful Tiger guiKits into the media organizer (but proceed at your own risk: it’s modifying .rsrc files, and not backing up the original could get ugly). You can see the whole guide- and a nifty example video- at this forum post.
There’s no excuse for not doing it anymore! Previously it required finding and changing the plethora of hex color values by hand, but resident artist Philipp Antoni just released a handy list to simplify this job, complete with the colors’ placement in the iTunes code. Additionally, he created a nifty web tool to generate the 53 (!) color values for the LCD equalizer from a simple image file.
Themers, start up your hex editors and get cracking! Perhaps with this, our years of suppression under the rule of the hardcoded iTunes colors will have finally come to an end (at least until Leopard)
You’re a unique person, just like everyone else. As a result of this, you’ve decided that your computer should reflect your deep inner reserves of beauty… and so you customise it! Everybody does this to some extent; some people decide that changing their desktop is good enough for them, and some people - most of them different from most folk - go as far as changing the entire look of their OS - icons, menubars and everything in between. As you’re reading this article on this particular website, let’s presume you’re one of these people.
..comes a deficit in menu bar space. Although unsupported by Apple, many third-party applications use the menu bar as an alternative for the Dock. Apps like Google Notifier, Twitterific, and Synergy all use the menu bar as the primary means of accessing the application and preferences, as well as for notifications (Google Notifier) or controllers (Synergy). The problem, however, is in build-up. Sure, you might say to yourself, there’s enough room in my menu bar for one more application (TuneTagger, let’s say). And for those of us blessed with a 30″ Cinema Display, menu bar clogging will never be an issue. But for the rest of us, those lugging around a 13″ MacBook or using that old 800×600 CRT with their Mac mini, menu bar clog is a real issue. Just look at Merlin Mann.