Now it’s time for a visual refresh of the app.

The topic has been discussed numerous times, and this evolution has been pending since a while: good news, these changes will take place in v10.7.

This will start with a new icon, but changing the icon cannot be an isolated change. It needs to be consistent with other components of the app, namely the default setup, the app style (menus, settings screens, various graphics inside the app) and also related artwork such as the banner that can be seen on the Play Store, which is most often displayed instead of the icon itself.

Several great icons have been designed by several members of this community. Of course we all have our own taste and it is hard to select a single icon among many other ones, but it’s time to choose, and here are my preferred ones:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111836669294532396593/posts/brSQHYrJuDC – first one, with shadows (from Jacob Barton)

https://plus.google.com/u/0/101399775307387148827/posts/a6LEoLCkxa1 – black and white (from Viggo Jorgen)

https://plus.google.com/u/0/113687364661606395395/posts/4ETk1DETS5w – black and white, round (from Gerd Reuter based on the one from Viggo Jorgen)

Now based on this selection, I asked myself why I liked these icons and what was the goal:

– I like the contrasted colors dark/white as found in Viggo’s icon and variation from Gerd.

– I like Jacob’s icon for its sharp angles and simple shapes. In the end, I prefer this abstracted design over a more classic house icon.

In my opinion the icon must be clear, contrasted, sharp and easy to grasp. I don’t necessarily want the icon to represent the app: if it can convey a feeling through an abstract drawing then it’s fine too, and maybe better. I would like the icon and the app to share some colors, if possible.

The icon from Jacob is my preferred of the three, but colors were not my preferred ones. So what I tried was to use the shape from Jacob’s icon, and adopt a more contrasted color set such as Viggo and Gerd ones. I selected dark grey and white for the background, to get the most contrasted colors (and also because I plan to reuse them for menus, screens and icons inside the app – white theme) but kept the red flash for it’s “punch”, and because a monochrome image doesn’t really catch the eye. Finally I kept some shadows… because I like that.

The result is the icon in the album above. What about this one? Do you like it?

Source file: http://www.pierrox.net/android/applications/lightning_launcher/misc/icon.svg

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