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Essay
 | A Brief Introduction to Icon Design. I wrote this essay on icon design for Compuserve's GoGraphics forum in 1995 and it was featured by Compuserve Magazine in August that year. I don't think I've read it since then, I don't want to cringe. (8kb) |
Test icons
I drew these test icons years ago to identify and isolate sundry icon display flaws. Right click on the images (or whatever) to download.
| Depth: | What it's for: |
 | Monochrome | Shows any geometric corruption. If hardware and/or software has applied even the slightest resizing, the single-pixel lines won't make it. They'll show shifting or clumping. |
 | VGA | Shows the 16 standard VGA colours (before 1995 the prevailing standard defined brighter shades for the "dark half"), plus transparency. If lossy compression has been applied, splotches will be visible in the solid blocks of colour. |
 | 256 colour | These are identical gradations of RGB and greyscale using 122 colours. Most lossy compression, dithering or hardware performance flaws will show up as horizontal banding, slight graininess, scattering or splotches. |
 | True colour | This one spoofs the visible colour spectrum in a 32x32 pixel space using 960 colours. Lossy compression or dithering may appear as curved banding, scattering or splotches. Low monitor gamma will often cause a horizontal band towards the bottom. |
 I run FreeBSD with a Window Maker desktop.
This page is kept up for historical purposes only, with no warranty.
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