

Ask YC: Which custom icon designers do you use for your startup? - psaccounts

Which custom icon design company/freelancer do you use for your startup? Not logo designs but icons.<p>I personally like clean icons like the Fugue set (www.pinvoke.com) or the Silk icon set (www.famfamfam.com). But neither of these designers is available for freelancing projects!
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auston
I was lucky enough to get Louie Mantia (<http://mantia.me/>) before he left
Tapulous for Icon Factory - I got charged about $900 for 4 icons (He now
charges $1000 per icon due to a non-compete).

I can also recommend Emanuel Sa (<http://www.emanuelsa.com/>) - He's _WAY_
cheaper and just as good.

Also I'd say David Lanham (<http://dlanham.com/>) & Fernando Lins
(<http://www.devixdesign.com/>) are among the best as well.

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ivanstojic
I know that my comment stems from both the fact that I have no understanding
nor ability to do graphic design.

I am however compelled to say that at the price of 1000 USD per icon, you
actually come out to a 1.5 cents per pixel of a 256x256 icon, or about 65
pixels per dollar.

Now that doesn't sound as bad as the million dollar homepage, is much better
looking than that brain-fart of an idea, and it's "yours." You get a custom
icon for your application, and damn it looks good.

Mantia's homepage shows that he can pretty much consistently do an icon of
that quality in one day.

Here comes the second part of the calculation... as a consultant/expert doing
enterprise integration (and I'm talking enterprise - multinational telcos,
airports) in Europe I can expect to earn about 400€ per day. That's about 535
USD per day.

I realize Mantia is earning about twice as much as I can per day and I get
confused. It's not even only about the money: while I am considered nothing
more than a higher-up keyboard jockey, he gets the kudos for being an artist.

To the proponents of the theory that programming is actually an art: have I
chosen to live off of a wrong art type? :-p

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rrhyne
Designing the symbol an application will be known by for thousands of users is
NOT a walk in the park.

In programming there is an intended result, and for all intents and purposes,
it doesn't matter how you get there. It's a 1 or 0 proposition.

Design on the other hand is full of subjective opinions from the client and
even the designer that get in the way of defining what the intended result is.
Worse, the only way to get close to that definition is to explore lots of
different designs.

The process may look something like this:

1\. client wants logo, gives the idea of spaceship 2\. designer sketches 3
spaceships 3\. client says he wanted the shuttle discovery 4\. designer
sketches up the space shuttle discovery 5\. client says he wanted the moon in
the background 6\. designer adds the moon to the background 7\. client signs
off on sketch 8\. designer renders sketch 9\. client says saturn would be much
better than the moon 10\. designer changes moon to saturn 11\. client says he
thought space shouldn't be blue-black, it should be black. 12\. designer makes
space black 13\. client says they've rethought the whole concept and need a
daisy instead of the space shuttle.

And that would be an easy client. If you start before step one, and the client
says "I'll know it when I see it." you can go ahead and double or tripple your
workload.

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richcollins
Or you can charge 100k for a logo with no options for the client:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb8idEf-Iak#t=3m10s>

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rrhyne
Right, but there was only one Paul Rand. :D

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blasdel
The indie Mac icon designers must be really making bank from the iPhone gold
rush. They were already making good money from the people releasing crappy Mac
apps, but now there's a much bigger and stupider group of miners to mine!

They get paid $1000+, up-front whether the app makes money or not, for
something that has no bearing on the app's functionality. Genius.

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patio11
I used a combination of stock icons and icons done by designers.

For my app:

<http://www.icons-icons.com/roma-icons.php> <\-- looks like Fisher-Price with
big, bold, colorful icons. A perfect fit for my target users, and I managed to
snaggle them on sale for $25.

For my website:

I originally made my own buttons. They worked, and I gradually iterated them
upwards, but I'm ultimately not a designer. When I got the site redone I had
both my web designer make some concepts and paid for a dedicated designer to
make some concepts and, importantly, give me the components (to allow more
mix-and-match fun as I tested which converted best).

My web gal: <http://www.gursimran.com> My icon/logo designer:
<http://www.logosamurai.com/>

Looks like they're having web site trouble at the moment. Ahh well, this is
why I use freelancers -- if your main provider goes dark, you switch. (I would
have to look up the numbers but I think I got everything done for less than
$300 in total, which is a pittance next to how much I make on the conversion
lift.)

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catone
I am lucky enough to work with Kelli Shaver on my startup. She's been a friend
for 10 years, and is an awesome designer -- of everything, but especially of
icons.

She recently took down her icon site, but still does icon work for people. Her
freelance portfolio is here: <http://www.kellishaver.com/>

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swombat
Ditto for that recommendation. I've known Kelli for many years and she is a
talented and smart designer - as well as an all-round nice person.

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silencio
There's a friend of a friend of mine who creates some really gorgeous icons
for iPhone: <http://mantia.me/>

He works at iconfactory (<http://iconfactory.com>), and their icons in general
are really delicious, although probably not cheap.

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noodle
i make use of fugue, silk, as well as aesthetica (<http://dryicons.com>) and
function (<http://www.wefunction.com>) sets. all free, although i don't know
if the latter two are available for work.

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jespern
I was lucky enough to get Kenichi Yoshida (<http://www.kenichiyoshida.jp/>).
He does excellent stuff, check out his portfolio. Not too expensive either.

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izaidi
Sofa (<http://www.madebysofa.com>) is really good (they did that excellent
Cappuccino icon), but I imagine they're pretty expensive.

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slater
i heartily recommend Mischa McLachlan, <http://www.zyotism.com/>

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zitterbewegung
Myself what do you guys think? <http://aconsapart.com/>

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DenisM
I could not get anything from your web site. The only link to something and
that is 404

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zitterbewegung
Oops sorry I was moving to a new server.

