Visibility in AppStore - Icon Design

Hi guys,

We've just blogged about some of our thoughts on Icon Design from our research, for anyone who's currently creating their icons, we hope you can find it useful. =)

http://www.littledrummerboy.sg/visib...y-icon-design/

Cheers all~

Interesting ....

Thanks! This is very useful. We've been working over our icon forever.

I found these two useful write ups on icons
http://www.appbackr.com/blog/develop...icons-are-made
http://www.wildfactor.net/game-devel...roll-icon.html
They were in the comment section of the littledrummerboy article

Great thoughts on the subject, Kelvin! I agree with all of your points, and they're all things I try to keep in mind when working on icons too. Nice to see your case study too.

Jeffmac, thanks for adding the related articles. I found the walk-through of the duck icon progress interesting. The appbackr article not so much - no statistics there seemed high enough to point to any best practice or worthwhile conclusion. But thanks for posting them!

My thoughts were to just use a fragment of a screenshot of game-play. It's obvious it's game-play, and if people like the look of it, they'll click..

My first game had a mascot icon, and didn't do as well.

mommagamehouse, Jeffmac, emdash,
Thanks for finding the article interesting/useful! Will be following up with a few other thoughts on visibility issues. =D

Mr Qwak,
Yeaps, if you are able to show actual gameplay it is definitely a great edge but not many games can fit a screenshot into the icon (even if it's a fragment of it). Not unless it's pixel art games like yours. Btw, tweeted about your game! Hope it can climb back up the charts soon! Great stuff~ =)

Just curious if there's some special subliminal power or sales bonus to using "god rays" in an icon. It's like 75% of mobile game icons have "god rays" in the background...

DP

Btw - thanks for sharing your blog/article on icon learnings and tips.

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Last edited by David Phan; 03-30-2012 at 12:42 AM.

I think Angry bird started the trend.

I think, the more of something the less unique it is, the less attention it gets.. Nice article!