Better Path Finder Icon

[Scott Citron]

No offense here, but PF would be well-served by a better looking application icon and splash. The road signs, as is, give you no clue about the quality and sophistication of the app they represent.

Scott

[zoom77]

I think the icon is great! I liked the old splash screen without the circle though.

[Scott Citron]

It's not that it's bad, it's just that it seems a bit lite-ish. Maybe I'll add a poll and this subject and see what others think.

Scott

[neilio]

This is actually something that we'd like to change. Personally, I think the icon doesn't look bad, but it's doesn't blow my socks off, either. I think it's a bit too top heavy and looks kind of weak in the dock, actually.

If you or anyone else has icon building skills, you're welcome to give it a country try to design us a new one! We can't pay lots, but we would definitely pay for a better icon.

I have design skills, but I've never created an icon before. Maybe I should just sit down and teach myself...

Neil

[Anonymous]

I made my own custom PathFinder icon a while back using Electric Image and IconBuilder Pro. A compass seemed like the most appropriate symbol to base it on, but to distinguish it from Safari I leaned towards the abstract, used gold tones, and rotated the compass 90 degrees which suggests an "X" as in Mac OS X (or NeXT).

http://www.vintagetype.com/pathfinder.jpg

[cliff]

Much more elegant than the street signs!

[Anonymous]

> rotated the compass 90 degrees

Er, make that 45 degrees!

[Scott Citron]

Beautiful, elegant, perfect!

Scott

[knghtbrd]

I was gonna suggest a little Mars rover icon, but that's cool too.. :D

[ecammit]

I like it

[knghtbrd]

http://www.vintagetype.com/pathfinder.jpg

Mark Thomas created the above icon for Path Finder just for his own use because he thought the street signs looked silly. Should this become the new Path Finder icon?

[knghtbrd]

Just a pointer for anyone watching this topic... I started a poll on whether or not Mark's icon should be the new Path Finder icon. Just a public opinion poll of course, it's ultimately up to Steve I guess. Go and vote anyway! :)

http://www.cocoatech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=190

[Mark Thomas]

Here are two larger images of the same compass icon, both with and without NSEW direction indicators. The lighting is a little different here (it was fudged somewhat in the icon version), but it's the same thing.

http://www.vintagetype.com/compass/compass-plain.jpg

http://www.vintagetype.com/compass/compass-NSEW.jpg

[neilio]

The original Path Finder icon was actually a compass like this. I've asked Steve if he has a bigger copy of it sitting around to post, but this is what it looked like:

http://www.cocoatech.com/images/pathfinderOld.gif

Mark, that isn't looking too shabby! As a designer, though, I cannot fight the urge to critique. :)

The biggest problem with the compass-style metaphor is that it's not visually, immediately evident what it is, especially in the dock. Both of these icons kind of look like throwing stars or something (though the addition of the directions alleviates that). I don't like the street sign either, but it is visually obvious when you look at it...

One other complaint, and this is purely personal, is that I don't like icons or computer graphics that are obviously rendered; your icon looks great, but it does have that "Hey, I'm a 3-D rendered object!" feel to it.

Don't take these criticisms personally; I'm not critiquing you as a person, I'm critiquing the work. 8)

If you're interested, take a look at Matthew Bice's site (iheartny.com) he was the designer of the street sign icon, and there are a few more icon ideas there that weren't adapted.

xIcons (http://www.iheartny.com/xicons/)

I personally really like the NASA ripoff, but for obvious reasons we can't use that. :)

Thanks for posting these, Mark!

[Mark Thomas]

No offense taken -- I know exactly what you mean. There are lots of ways to make the thing look more realistic, but I suppose an icon is always going to be a compromise since it has to work small and really needs a certain amount of abstractedness and simplicity to be readable at such a small size. The NASA icon might be too busy, and at any rate it says "NASA" more than "Path Finder" even though it HAS "PathFinder" literally written on it, if that makes any sense.

I'm not surprised that the compass idea has been brought up before. It really is the most obvious design for the thing. It just makes sense.

[Mark Thomas]

Here's an oil painted version:

http://www.vintagetype.com/compass/compass-oil.jpg

[latelio]

I don't like the NSEW direction indicators. Mostly because they make no sense to me. For me it's either NSOW (german) or NSEO (french)…

[Mark Thomas]

Hmm. Not sure if there's a solution for that. I mean, one must pick a hemisphere. Naturally, I chose mine.

[Mark Thomas]

Here's a more realistic (but still very stylized) version:

http://www.vintagetype.com/compass/compass-hard.jpg

[Mark Thomas]

Here's what this version looks like in the Dock:

http://www.vintagetype.com/compass/dockicon.jpg

[neilio]

What does it look like at 32x32? 16x16?

Neil

[Mark Thomas]

Right now it looks a little fuzzy at those sizes since the OS is scaling the 128 down. I'd have to spend some time optimizing those sizes (and even the 128, truth be told), but that's not tough to do in Photoshop.

[Mark Thomas]

This is kind of a quick job, but it'll give you an idea of how the various sizes -- 128, 64, 48, 32 and 16 -- look:

http://www.vintagetype.com/compass/compasses.jpg

[Mark Thomas]

The same, but more refined:

http://www.vintagetype.com/compass/compasses2.jpg

[knghtbrd]

Eh, I don't know, all you have to do is make a little rover that kinda resembles the NASA one and you'd be okay. Just don't use a NASA photo is all. =)

I don't think I like the directions too much, Mark, they look kinda silly and don't work at small sizes at all.

[latelio]

… and this is not about hemisphere, but about languages. In my basic languages East is called "Osten" (German) and West is called "Ouest" (French). So I prefer language-neutral Icons. English direction names are clear for English-speaking users only.

[Mark Thomas]

I'd be happy to use language-neutral direction symbols. What do they look like?

[Anonymous]

sorry, I'v been a bit rude yesterday. By "language-neutral" I meant no abbreviation at all. Just leave the graphical elements, without NESW, which are specific to English.
By the way, I find your icon very appealing. Still I'd prefer a version without those letters.

latelio

[Mark Thomas]

No problem. I actually did a search yesterday for some kind of Greek or or otherwise neutral direction symbols, but couldn't find anything other than arrows. At any rate, it does seem to be the general consensus that the compass works best as an icon without the direction markers.

Et j'apprends le français, ainsi je n'ai pas voulu offenser aucun orateur français.

[Anonymous]

Matthew Bice Of http://www.iheartny.com has made several Path Finder Replacements.

He also designs custom icons to order. You should definitely check the site out.

Find the icons here http://www.iheartny.com/xicons/ and be sure to download the Magnetic Fields icons. His Long Vermont Roads icon is very fitting.

[Christian Roth]

Much more elegant than the street signs!

Personally, I'm not too fond with yet another round icon in my Dock, which is squeezed down to 1600 pixels wide at the screen bottom with the 70 applications I regularly use during my daily work. I already find me mis-clicking between Safari, OmniWeb, Mozilla, and other round icons are Dreamweaver, SoundStudio, QuickTime Player, NetFinder, Create, Synchronize X, IE, Opera, iTunes (sort-of).

I like the current icon of PF very, very much since it stands out by SHAPE, which is important when icons get so small that details and therefore color are no longer clearly discernable. So, whatever you come up with when you actually want to change icon (again), please don't make it round by shape.

Regards, Christian.

[Monkey Angst]

I like Mark's icon, although I do wish it was blue. :) (although I suppose that would make it indistinguishable from Safari) The directional letters should be left off, in my opinion, especially at lower resolutions. In fact, at the lowest resolutions it would probably be better to have a tweaked design instead of just a 24x24 or 16x16 rendering of the same model.

[steve]

I like the new icon without the NSWE!

Steve

[totte]

Just one thought. I like the current icon because it differs much from all those blue thingies that most have. When I look at my icon bar this moment, half of them are blue, 6 out of twelve.

So please, if you change the icon, make it stick out even in small format so it is easily recognizable. Remeber, icons are symbols for something, not pictures of something.

[janpeeters]

In my opion, the look and concepts of this icon is way too classic for such a modern app.
This looks like webbrowser icon to me because of it's similarity to safari.
I would like to see something which is more exciting to look at. This icon is very well designed but doesn't fit to Pathfinder.
It also gives associations with NATO and other global organisations, I don't like that.

Jan Peeters, graphic designer

[Mark Thomas]

Whenever I find myself idle, it seems to be a hobby of mine to concoct new icons for PathFinder.

http://www.west.net/~vtmark/pathfindersign.jpg

[Catfish_Man]

Very nice :) Simple, distinctive, colorful. Also, it's offtopic, but I have to say, the Pages icon is just gorgeous.

[Mark Thomas]

Yeah, that Pages icon is a masterpiece and a true work of beauty.

[Mark Thomas]

I call this one the PathFinder "Métro" icon:

http://www.west.net/~vtmark/PathFinder-metro.png

[Abhi Beckert]

Woah! Can you post the first one as an icns file? I wanna use it...

[Mark Thomas]

PathFinder road sign icon (http://www.west.net/~vtmark/PathFinder_road_sign.sit)