[Tango-artists] Facing direction of icons

[Daniel Pope]

Eugenia Loli-Queru wrote:
>> The guidelines are a bit vague on this point, perhaps on purpose (just
>> a guess though), as the most important factor is to be able to spot
>> what kind of object the icon represents.
> 
> Yup. I agree that the "facing front" is the main theme for most Tango
> icons today. But there are some objects that are not recognizable if
> they are facing front. Like the video camera icon for example, it was
> correctly designed to be facing left just because a front facing
> wouldn't be too clear. Thing is though, this "left" facing must be
> mentioned in the guidelines page as the desired fallback. If you don't
> mention that, an artist might choose to design his icon facing right or
> left. And that's what's going to create a future problem. I think that
> this is an important point to be added in the guidelines. Jacob?

The guideline must be that icons face right. Think of menu items with
icons. The icon is invariably to the left of the menu text. You need the
icons to face right for the 'flow' to carry from icon to menu text (in
left-to-right writing systems; it would actually be better to have
left-facing icons in right-to-left writing systems).

I've tried to find an online reference for graphic design 'flow' to
justify this but I can't at the moment. I do however hold in my hands
the very good "Design Basics Index" (ISBN 0-7153-2053-X) which devotes a
whole chapter to it :)

Dan