Some Random Dude

While I am working the final pieces of a new article, I wanted to tie up some loose ends. Iconic is still a living/growing project. I continue to design icons for the set as they are needed – as expected, the set grows in spurts. Yesterday, I added 11 more icons to the set, a few of which really should have been in the original release. The new icons consist of a link, thumbtack, two map pins, horizontal move and vertical move (both in three styles) and cursor. The set has increased in number by roughly twenty new icons since its initial release and there is still plenty of room for it to grow. More importantly though, the icons are now available as an Omnigraffle stencil – hopefully this will be useful to all the beautiful IA/UX peeps around the world.

The process of updating the set is quite automated, yet it still takes some time. The export process uses Adobe’s Extendscript to color and save each icon in addition to a simple ANT command in Flex to export the SWC file. My plan is to eventually release the JSX script and the ANT commands so that people could add to the set on their own and export as needed – perhaps this will be in the next release. With every additional format I tack on to the set, an additional workflow is added to the process – which has me a bit concerned about any significant expansion from this point on. That said, I would like to add either Axure or Visio formats since OmniGraffle is Mac only. I will try to have something available in the next week or so.

Enjoy the icons and please do provide feedback on how to improve them.