Revision as of 10:40, 21 June 2010

MeeGo Netbook Icon Style Guidelines

This document was created to shed some light on creating icons for MeeGo Netbook for graphic designers. The MeeGo netbook icons have a unique glyph like style. It aims to be simple, light and easily distinguishable.

The Building Blocks

Some practical points about the style to keep in mind:

- Try to use an even number of pixels of negative space, it's not absolutely required, but it will make the icon set look more consistent.
- Only use roundness when the actual objects in real life are round

24x24

This is the standard and most common size. Start making your icons in this size. Some more detailed examples:

48x48

These are used in large icon views, like the file manager. They are exactly the same as the 24x24 versions, just scaled up 200%.

16x16

These are ofthe used in lists.

The guidelines for the 16x16 are slightly different because of space constraints, here are some tips to maintain crispyness:

- Straight  stroke corners are allowed. This works well for paths on the inside of the icon.
- Use a slightly rounded rectangle instead of a circle if the radius is smaller than around 5px.
- You don't have to use an even number of pixels for the negative spaces

Application Tiles

The 24x24 icons can be applied on the the application tiles to create program launchers. To do this, scale the glyph icon by 133% and give it a 2.5px white stroke. Now center the glyph icon on the tile. For the smaller tile, you can just apply the 24x24 icon without modifying its size Done!

Inkscape

Some settings you may want to set in Inkscape to make your life easier:

 - Turn stroke width scaling off
 - Use a 1px grid
 - Turn node snapping on
 - Use steps of 1px when moving objects around with the arrow keys

Templates

Here you can download a zip file with all the examples from above plus some handy templates with the right default settings.

File:Templates.zip