Restarting the Commons Android app icon discussion; we want to ship an update in the next couple weeks so it'd be great to get this sorted out.
Some quick notes:
* Don't forget to talk to your clients when planning designs! I felt a
little bit like the first version from the design team got created with
no input from the people working on the app, and that my feedback wasn't welcome because I wasn't in on the design team's original discussion.
This is an open, transparent organization with an open, iterative
software development process, and we expect to be able to participate in
all aspects of that.
* Always test icons in a realistic environment next to other built-in apps and third-party apps -- if you guys don't have good templates for this, I can produce more screenshots from my phones and tablets that you can cut-n-paste into.
* We always
need a vector original that we can keep in source control so future revisions or new resolutions can be created as necessary. SVG is strongly preferred, since
it can be edited with free tools, uploaded to the wikis, viewed in
browsers, etc.
Here's a screenshot of my phone with the current temporary icon in place:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/5/5e/Commons-android-Current-icon.png
^ This current icon is "too iOS-y"; it has a color logo, is very gradienty, etc. We have a PSD original somewhere in the design Dropbox share but since it's a PSD we can't edit it with free tools.
Here's a screenshot with the proposed icon May put together based on discussion from the design team:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/0/0f/Commons-android-Flat-icon.png
^ To me this is overly flat and washed out -- the logo is mid-gray on white. We have no original vector version that I can find, only the output versions on dropbox. I'm not willing to ship this icon as-is, but it's a good starting-off point for discussion.
Here's a screenshot today with an iteration I tossed together:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/d/d2/Commons-android-Flat-alternate-icon.png
^ This has a black-on-offwhite icon which I think fits in better with other Android launcher icons, and tweaks shading to match the 'light source on top' look (top is lighter than the front, not darker). We have an SVG original in source control:
Git branch with this icon: https://github.com/brion/apps-android-commons/commits/mono-icon
SVG and large PNG in scratch dir: https://github.com/brion/apps-android-commons/tree/mono-icon/scratch/icon-mono
Thoughts?
-- brion