InfoTart

So I finally launched the latest and greatest version of FloSpace FloPrompter 2.0 a couple of weeks ago. What a journey it was… It’s tough enough trying to figure out how to bend Microsoft components to one’s will. It’s also much harder than it should be to find a thoughtfully complete stock icon library.

I placed special emphasis on “thoughtfully complete” because there are a lot of stock icon libraries out there, and most are complete crap. Or they’re woefully incomplete. Or seem to have been made by graphically inclined monkeys because they’re full of random unrelated icons that would never appear in the same application together.

For little companies like mine which have an extremely limited budget, a stock icon library is the only real choice one has. For $100 - $300, you get a bunch of professionally-made images that you can use in your software product or web site with no additional royalty payments. It’s an inexpensive way to add a touch of polish to your project.

Or, rather, it should be. Except most stock icon libraries suck.

First, let me tell you about the stock icon library that I used and why this one is a fantastic deal at just $199. Glyph Lab is the name of the company and the graphic designer who runs the show, Dave W., was a pleasure to work with. I had a couple of questions and Dave was extremely responsive to them. I wrote to Dave and said that I thought his icon library was missing a couple of icons that are core to a text editor set, and he not only agreed with me, but he also gave them to me for free rather than charging me extra. (And they ought to have been added to the complete commercial set now, I believe.)

Let me also sing the praises of why I think the Glyph Lab set is the best set out there and why it deserves the moniker of the most “thoughtfully complete” set around. (And I’ve looked at dozens of sets!)

Icons come in logical sets, depending on the features of the product. It’s clear that Glyph Lab is the only company which thought through the needs of application developers when deciding what kinds of icons to create.

• Standard Application Icons: Almost all desktop applications are going to need the following sets of icons: New Document, Open, Save, Save As, Print, Print Setup, Print Preview, Options, and Close.
• Secondary: Some applications like FloPrompter also have import and export features, so these two basic icons should be included.
• Edit Icons: Almost all applications have basic editing features: Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, and Select All.
• Wordprocessing Icons: Any application which provides “rich” text editing features needs a complete set of icons. What drives me crazy is that of all the icon libraries I looked at, only Glyph Lab had icons for all of these features: Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikeout, Text Color, Bullets, Indent, Unindent, Left Align, Center Align, Right Align.
• Media Playback: Although FloPrompter doesn’t play music or video, I use the media playback metaphor for controlling the scrolling and also navigating through the various “broadcast segments” (text snippets) that the author has written. Icons in this set must include: Play, Pause, Stop, Next, Previous, First, Last.

I’ve actually developed a full list of categories and lists of icons that should be included in each category. I grew so frustrated at one point that I spent a week or two researching all of that! There for awhile, I considered starting my own icon design company simply to create thoughtfully packaged and complete icon sets for application developers based on the type of features in their product. Other categories based around feature sets include:

• 2D Drawing: This is a large set of icons including basic 2D geometric shapes, object alignment, space distribution, grouping, and related features.
• 3D Drawing: Some special purpose icons, including light effects, 3D shapes, 3D navigation, etc.
• Chat: Only a dozen or so icons related to buddy list management and presence (e.g., available, offline, invisible, etc.). Skype has the most robust sets of features and presence statuses I’ve seen, so you’d want to plan for at least that many. All of the other systems, like AOL, MSN, Yahoo, etc., appear to basically have different sub-sets of the total Skype set of presence statuses.
• Database Record Management & Navigation: I probably should have put this one first because so many custom-built desktop software is based on using custom databases. The one thing that drives me crazy is that graphic designers often forget the lifecycle factor: For every object that is created, you must account for its editing and deletion, as well. Those are the three universal steps in an object’s lifecycle. Many objects have additional stages, especially once workflow processes are taken into account.

So one of the major points of this rant is a request to stock icon library makers: Don’t keep slapping random icons together like you’re doing now! Think about which of these feature sets you’re going to support, and them create a complete set of icons for that feature set (such as all of the icons I’d need for a basic wordprocessing program, or database mgmt. application). I’m coming to you as a solution provider. Provide me with a total solution – don’t do a half-ass job of it, as my mother would say. After all, I want my software product to look good and for its icons to look like they were all drawn by the same hand in the same style.

Well, I will spare the readership any additional ranting. But if any enterprising graphic designer out there reads this post and sees more clearly what developers ACTUALLY need and changes his or her ways accordingly, I’ll have done my job.

In the meantime, if you’re in the market for an excellent set of stock icons at a great price, Glyph Lab is the set for you. Unfortunately, they’re also the only decent set out there. Check them out:

www.GlyphLab.com