[Pythonmac-SIG] Fwd: MacPython icon mockup

[has]

Jacob Rus wrote:

>>http://hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/python/prettified-py-icons.png
>
>[...]what do people think of the "generic application" icon as a default for apps created by py2app/py2applet?

Definitely getting there. Though the top snake could do with being a bit lighter. The icon is, first and foremost, a statement that "this is an application"; the snake logo is just a subtle hint to say, "by the way, it's built in Python". The eye should be drawn to the "A" first, then pick up on the subtle 'hint' behind it, and finally come to rest on the "A" again.

Right now the top snake is about 40% grey and still fighting with the "A" for the eye's attention; I'd take it to 30% (I've tried it here) and maybe knock 2% off the bottom snake just to preserve noticeable contrast between them.


> Also, is the pencil for the IDLE.app icon now okay, or can it still use work?

Looks perfect. (Now we just need IDLE's insides to look as beautiful as its outside - perhaps in 2.6...;)


>The icons still needing to be done are one for py2applet, and one for BuildApplet.app.  I'm thinking both of these can be stuffit-esque grinders, or similar, one with the "applet" icon coming out the bottom, and the other with the "generic app" icon coming out the bottom, and with python scripts going in the top.

Sounds fine - I have no better ideas. The grinder is a bit of a cliché, but I don't see this as any bad thing here: you want its purpose to be obvious to users, and folks are used to interpreting the grinder symbol as 'format converter'.

...

One last thing: try the egg with the logo positioned vertically. Having the egg itself on the diagonal works well, but putting the snakes on the same diagonal makes them hard to read [1], and causes the strong visual bottom-left-to-top-right diagonal line to completely dominate the entire image.

Putting the logo vertically (I've tried it here) makes it easy to identify and the contrast of diagonal and vertical gives the whole thing a bit more of a 'jaunty' look, rather than just looking a bit drunk. Plus it improves consistency with the rest of the icon set (where the snakes are always the same vertical orientation, either literally or implied by perspective).

HTH

has

[1] i.e. It's not like when they're shown in perspective, when they're only 10 degrees off the vertical and you've got the rectangular 'paper' framing it to remind you of up/down/left/right. Rotated 45 degrees it really starts to look like a different "X" shaped symbol rather than the "+" shape it's meant to be.
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