The idea is that by naming a layer or group like this: Photoshop includes a little-known asset generating feature that I highly recommend. If all goes according to plan, this script will quickly generate all the icons you need. “makeIcons”: “node iconGenerator/scripts/make_icons.js”
ĭrop this folder into your React Native project in the root directory, run ‘npm install’ or ‘yarn’.Īdd this line to your package.json file to keep things nice and easy.
#Nice app icon generator generator#
When pushing these apps to beta testers it’s really great to provide unique icons to distinguish staging from production.Īfter much tedium and gnashing of teeth, I’ve built what I think is a very slick icon generator using Photoshop and the Sharp JS image processing library. Our projects often have a staging/dev version and a production version generated from the same codebase. Unfortunately, and as many of you know, the process of creating these icons is tedious and frustrating. Despite this fast-moving approach, I really don’t like to send a deliverable to a client with the icons looking like this: When we’re prototyping an app we focus on the core functions and leave most of the extras for another future milestone. With our requirements of speed and multi-platform deployment React Native is the clear choice. Much of our work is in building proof of concept and early stage apps to demonstrate the viability of new products and ideas. Node scripts/make_icons.js - for an alternate staging / dev mode iconĮdit project_name in scripts/config.js to reflect the name of your project In your Xcode project add a blank icon set: And if you don’t know them already, follow the icon designers listed above - they’re experts at their craft.A simple Javascript tool for creating, editing, generating and placing all icon assets into a cross-platform React Native project Let’s run some more variations on Tweetbot.
The folks at The Iconfactory have the wonderful Twitterific app, I wonder how it fares? Let’s end by circling back to Twitter-related icons. This version of 1Password icon by Gavin Nelson is interesting because even though rounded corners are not in the original image, somehow the AI is trying to insert them on the corners - perhaps that pattern is in the model from lots of other iOS icon artwork? I suppose that makes sense, these tools are probably more about ideating in a case like this. Not a lot of interesting stuff here when you work back from the finished product. What about Headlines from Matthew Skiles? I think that was a hard AI for the AI (app icon for the artificial intelligence). Let’s go back to pulling random icons from solid app icon designers I’m familiar with, starting with Weather Line from Louie Mantia Funny how the AI took the arrow indicating direction and movement in the original design and turned it into an “A” in some cases. What if we go with something a bit more complex from Apple’s repertoire, like Maps. Complete rip-offs obviously, but in theory some shippable-quality in there. In a similar vein, how about Apple’s Weather icon? Perhaps Michael’s variations are higher quality because the AI model has lots of game graphics in its model, whereas artwork similar to Tweetbot is less common? That’s a totally uninformed shot in the dark.Īnyhow, this gets me thinking I should try something more simplistic. Lol, given a hand-crafted icon from a venerable designer, that’s more what I’m expecting from an AI art generation tool. Interesting…let’s try another one: a Mark Jardine classic, Tweetbot (6). While some aren’t entirely as visually intelligible as the original, they weren’t goofy (which I expected).
I’m actually quite surprised by the results here. To start, I figure I’ll go with one of Michael’s apps: Conduct This. I came across Michael Flarup’s quip about using AI art generators for app icon work and it made me want to try generating a few variations.įor this experiment, I’m pulling icons from my iOS icon gallery and using Dall-E to upload the original icon and generate variations. With all the hubbub around AI art lately, I’ve been thinking about how it relates to the design and creation of iOS app icons.
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