Designing a Coin Icon

[GregsonVaux]

I will be designing a coin icon in the near future and I am wondering if people have hints about how to do it. If I remember correctly, the large icon is 32x32 pixels and the small icon is 16x16 pixels.

 

I have been using my vector software to try out icons, but the resolution seems worse than what I see on the Groundspeak site. It almost seems as though the pixels on the site are blended better. Does anyone have hints on how to design icons?

 

Thanks,

 

Gregson

[GregsonVaux]

 

Perhaps I have had some success. I made these three icons and I think that I will use the top-left icon. The other two have the word "hope" in tengwar, but I think that they are too busy. Does anyone have any thoughts?

 

Gregson

[+NicElliott]

lol ive seen way busier. 1.top left 2. top right.

[GregsonVaux]

You and I agree. Barring further changes, it will be the top left.

[+Team kizb]

How do you re-size an image down to the required Icon sizes for Groundspeak?

[GregsonVaux]

How do you re-size an image down to the required Icon sizes for Groundspeak?

 

I use vector software, which is independent of pixels. The image looks like any other image up until the point that it is either printed or made into a jpeg. I set the image so that it will be 32x32, but on my screen it looks high resolution.

 

The software that I use is free and is called "Inkscape". You should have no trouble finding Inkscape downloads.

[+fox-and-the-hound]

Try designing at 320x320 pixels to start and then reduce exactly 10% for your final results. Many softwares interpolate (guess) at pixel color and placement when scaled down at uneven percentages resulting in rougher looking icons. You can also design as vector and then open that vector in a raster based program at the exact final resolution for better results. Which vector program do you use?

[+Team kizb]

Try designing at 320x320 pixels to start and then reduce exactly 10% for your final results. Many softwares interpolate (guess) at pixel color and placement when scaled down at uneven percentages resulting in rougher looking icons. You can also design as vector and then open that vector in a raster based program at the exact final resolution for better results. Which vector program do you use?

 

I'm not even sure what vectoring is. All I've been using is Paint and Power Point to get down my basic ideas. I'm going to try "Inkscape", any other suggested programs that work well for icons as well as Geocoin artwork?

[+fox-and-the-hound]

Try designing at 320x320 pixels to start and then reduce exactly 10% for your final results. Many softwares interpolate (guess) at pixel color and placement when scaled down at uneven percentages resulting in rougher looking icons. You can also design as vector and then open that vector in a raster based program at the exact final resolution for better results. Which vector program do you use?

 

I'm not even sure what vectoring is. All I've been using is Paint and Power Point to get down my basic ideas. I'm going to try "Inkscape", any other suggested programs that work well for icons as well as Geocoin artwork?

 

At the professional end are Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator (I've used these to design more than a hundred coins) as well as Painter (forget who makes that one), but these are all relatively expensive programs. At the lower end, but rapidly getting pretty good from what I hear is a free downloadable program called Gimp. http://www.gimp.org/ is there home page. While I do not use it myself, it's becoming very popular very quick so they must be doing something right.

[GregsonVaux]

I'm not even sure what vectoring is. All I've been using is Paint and Power Point to get down my basic ideas. I'm going to try "Inkscape", any other suggested programs that work well for icons as well as Geocoin artwork?

 

I am aware of two kinds of graphic software: bitmap (or raster) and vector. Bitmap treats a picture as a bunch of dots, while vector thinks of a picture as a number of shapes. Bitmap software would think of a line as several hundred dots on a grid, while vector software would see a line as a start point, an endpoint, slope, and thickness. Bitmap software uses less memory for photographs but more memory for line drawings, while vector software is the opposite and uses more memory for photographs and less memory for line drawings.

 

While memory use is important, the real advantage of vector software is that is has no resolution. If you have a drawing of a square in vector software, it only cares about a few key points such as corners and doesn’t care if it is 10x10 pixels or 10,000x10,000 pixels. Thus, in vector software a printout will look the same if it is 1 inch on each side or 10 feet on each side. For this reason, most serious artists use vector software.

 

I have always used bitmap software until just a few months ago when I started getting serious about making graphics. The software was very different than bitmap software and it took about a month of self teaching and long nights before I was comfortable, but it was well worth it.

 

As I wrote in another post, I use Inkscape (free download) for my vector drawings. Bitmap software is still better for some uses such as modifying jpegs and for that purpose, I use Paint.net (also a free download). Don’t confuse Paint.net for the free Paint that comes with Microsoft Windows. Paint.net is much more powerful and makes much better jpegs.