[Tango-artists] Virtual Machines icons

[Rodney Dawes]

I think this thread exposes a lot of where icon design lacks in a lot of
cases. People will often put too much effort into trying to express the
one part of an application, that makes it different from other similar
applications, rather than just designing what's best. For instance, the
important part of a virtual machine, is still the machine. It doesn't
matter that it's virtual or not. It could be a machine in a rack
somewhere down the hall, but still appear through the same, if not
overwhelmingly similar UI, as a real machine. Likewise, mounting an ISO
should still look like a disc. It may not be a physical disc, but it's
a disc, no less. People often get caught up in trying to express the
transport method, more so than the content.

I think just having a branded icon for VMWare or Qemu or whatever, is
fine. There's no need to make it overly generic, as it's not an action,
or anything. And there's no need in trying to express the virtualization
too much. Think of it this way...

"How do you draw a virtual icon?"

:)

-- dobey


On Fri, 2007-01-19 at 15:01 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> Christian Hammond wrote:
> > I'm a little concerned that the VM icons won't really shout out "Virtual 
> > machines!" to people. I assume the basis for these icons is the old 
> > VMware Workstation icon (which is being completely redone for 
> > Workstation 6.0). The problem is that a computer next to a monitor 
> > doesn't imply virtual machines in any way, and I think it would take a 
> > little outside the box thinking to come up with an icon that signifies 
> > this while staying product-independent.
> 
> Trying to come up with an icon that represents a virt machine is 
> something I've spent a lot of time on. :) Some of the stuff I've tried 
> with Bluecurve is here (Inkscape SVG available from the download link) - 
> I hope this helps:
> 
> http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/46975025/