

iOS 7 and the Iconography of ‘Alien’ - shawndumas
http://design.iconfactory.com/ios-7-and-alien/

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selmnoo
It seems Susan Kare, the pioneer designer of the original icons, also designed
the icons for Nautilus (the file manager). Here I was, thinking Nautilus was
just some small hobby project by some guys. Anyone know how this came about?
Is Susan Kare just a woman who loves contributing to FLOSS now? What's the
story here?

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twoodfin
Eazel, which created Nautilus, was founded by a bunch of the original Mac
builders. The team included Bud Tribble, Andy Hertzfeld, Mike Boich and Susan
Kare[1].

There's some interesting backstory on Nautilus in one of the Don Melton
epsiodes of the Debug podcast[2].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eazel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eazel)

[2] [http://www.imore.com/debug-11-don-melton-and-
safari](http://www.imore.com/debug-11-don-melton-and-safari)

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lstamour
Very cool.

For those who want to follow along at home:
[http://blog.mikeswanson.com/iosroundedrect](http://blog.mikeswanson.com/iosroundedrect)

I modified this myself to produce better background colors for testing
different icon designs with an angular gradient and some layer cropping. This
script and a script to save icons at different sizes really helped when making
30 iOS apps for iOS 7 recently. (I don't have time now to share my changes but
if anyone's interested, I'll check this comment later for replies.)

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britta
Nice, it wouldn't be hard to adapt these into an icon theme for jailbroken iOS
devices - a WinterBoard theme is just a directory containing image files named
in a standardized way (with the bundle IDs and filenames of the app icons you
intend to theme). And if the artist wanted to distribute it on a default
repository in Cydia, these are instructions:
[http://www.macciti.com/faq.php?faq=cydia_usage](http://www.macciti.com/faq.php?faq=cydia_usage)

~~~
baddox
That would be particularly useful once an iOS 7 jailbreak is released.

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tptacek
The laser diamond in the new design is too big.

~~~
reneherse
I noted this as well, while still really enjoying the entire concept and
undertaking. It's very interesting to see how the change in proportion of many
of the elements influences our reading of them. The various spacesuits are
harder to read in the new slimmed down versions. One takeaway for me: don't be
a slave to your grid.

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rlucas
I recall some interesting '70s psuedomystical icons / labels on the keyboard
during Ripley's self-destruct sequence. "Agaric," "yoni," and "lingam" among
others. Will these start popping onto my phone's home screen if I upgrade??

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lelf
> _it brings computer iconography firmly back around to concentrating on
> communication rather than illustration – function over form_

This somewhat contradicts with the exercise result

