Posts tagged "icons"

While creating documentation for Dice Cricket, a game a friend and I designed many years ago, I produced a set of diagrams which represent the segments of a cricket field. The isolated nature of this small design challenge provided a refreshing break from the various and interrelated considerations involved in designing for the Web.

Mid-wicket

Down the ground

Covers

Behind point

Behind the wicket

Behind square

You're free to make use of these images (they're transparent PNGs). Attribution is appreciated but not required. :)

Recently I've been on a mission to minimize the number of HTTP requests made while loading pages on this site. Until yesterday, the archives page was making an HTTP request for each of the tiny calendar icons used on the page. Therefore, up to 31 HTTP requests were required just to retrieve the calendar icons. Not good.

The same result can be achieved with a single HTTP request through the use of a sprite:

Tiny calendar icons sprite, which you're welcome to save and use

I've always enjoyed creating icons in Photoshop. Not the gorgeous, often richly detailed icons that grace OS X applications — although I would love to learn to create these as well — but icons designed pixel by pixel for display at very small scales.

Working with a tiny canvas and a limited palette (I restrict myself to hexadecimal colours that can be written in shorthand) is a challenge, but I find the experience rewarding. I recently redesigned this site's archives page, for which I created a set of 16 x 16px calendar icons.

Calendar icons shown at 300% of actual size

Calendar icons shown actual size

You are welcome to download the tiny calendar icon set (≈20.1 kB).