The Icon Book

by William Horton

Uses a practical, research-based approach to the design of icons. Icons are used widely but not always used wisely. This book will prescribe an orderly process for designing sets of icons, suggest ideas for ''unpicturable'' concepts, explain how to refine and test icon ideas, demonstrate how to design large sets of related icons, guide the development of icons for the international market. There is an icon glossary which features over 1,500 icons...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 047159900X
• ISBN13: 9780471599005
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

useful guide book for desining icons

This book is an comprehensive beginner’s guide of designing computer icons, and I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in designing, because the introduced strategies to create icons are so deliberate that we can use them to design other creative works like home pages. The main purpose of this book is to discuss how to design icons that are easy to recognize, understand, and remember, including the concept of icons, strategies to design them, making processes, and even a case study. So if you read thorough this book, you can get an overview of designing process of useful icons. Although this book is for icons, it provides many useful strategies in designing not only icons but also any designing works. One of the most useful strategies is to make an iconic language. This means that it is more efficient and wiser way to prepare common element parts of icons and make complicated icons by combining them, instead of making them from nothing. I think this idea is so useful for many designing works that we can apply those ideas to other works like homepages or posters besides icons. Another good point of this book is that there are many example icons. Because this is an introductory book and written for beginners of designing, every discussion is accompanied by many recommended or anti examples in order for readers to understand clearly what the author wants to say. There is also a sample icon starter set. Thus this book is a beginner guide book of creating computer icons and discusses many so useful and fundamental ways of designing them that you can create other decent designing works by applying them. That is why I recommend this book.

Don't judge this book by the cover!

If you need to do icon design this book is a must! Horton comes from the old school where you have to show the most in only a few pixels - and there is some very smart thinking here to pick up on. This book is great if you are just starting to learn about interactive design or an old pro looking for inspiration.

Excellent reference

This book is laid out nicely, with exercises and thought processes on how to develop effective icons. The author includes examples of icons he has developed for applications in the past, along with his workflow. For example, one section lists the name of each icon (Edit, Delete, Add quotation) and then has sketches of 5 different ideas a piece. This book also discusses why people associate certain symbols with certain phrases, as well as outlining when to use graying, broken lines, arrows, etc. to add meaning.One shipment of this book did not include the disks, I had to call back and get the disk shipped to me seperately.