Sep 24
My NetNewsWire icon
2004 at 03.27 am posted by Veerle Pieters
I haven’t tried the new beta version of NetNewsWire 2.0b3 yet, but I’ve taken a look and one thing is for sure I don’t like the icon. Especially the hard black border around the satellite and the globe is rather disturbing to me. I’m more a sucker for the smooth or liquid style. So I fired up Illustrator CS and redrew the globe and satellite in my own style.
Download the icon for Mac OS X If GUI is your thing, then also do not forget to pay Jon Hicks a visit and download his set of application icons for this NetNewsWire beta. Really a must! He's done (as always) an amazing job. Instructions on how to apply them can be found on his site too.
NetNewsWire is an easy-to-use RSS Web news reader for Mac OS X.
- Paste my "NetNewsWire" icon file on the old application icon the traditional way (using command+i etc.)
- Select the application icon in the Finder
- Hold down 2nd mouse button or control click
- Choose "Show Package Content" from the contextual menu
- Double click the folder "Contents"
- And drop my "appIcon.icns" file in the "Resources" folder
- Then click replace (or first copy the old one to your desktop if you want to keep it)
UPDATE: I did notice that if you just paste the icon on the application, the traditional way, the old icon reappears when you start up the application. So in order to circumvent I also made an icns icon with Apple's Developers Tools. This is what you need to do:
19served
1
This one is much better , thanks for sharing, Verlee ;-) You should also offer this new icon to author of NNW.
BTW if you like polished GUI visit NewsFire homepage. It’s simple RSS reader with simple and clean GUI.
2
Hey you don’t even have to download Jon’s icons they already exist - Quit NetNewsWire just fire up the Terminal enter the string:
defaults write com.ranchero.NetNewsWire toolbarTheme JonHicks
Press Return and the icons will be there.
PS: yours is much nicer than the standard one!!
3
Great icon Veerle!
4
The lower right part of the icon disappears a bit on lighter backgrounds. Makes the satelite disappear oddly.
5
@Steve, hm strange, I have no idea what you mean. Just did a test in the Finder and nothing strange or weird happens on my end.
6
If this isn’t the best icon I’ve ever seen Veerle! Very nice colors, and I like the liquidy look myself..! ;)
How’d you make such an awesome satellite???
7
Wow, what a beautifull icon!
If it weren’t for the fact that I don’t use a Mac and despise newsreaders, I’d install it in a heartbeat.
And as Rohit said, that has got to be the best rendering of a satelite ever.
8
@Rohit, AkaXaka, I started from the original satellite but gave it a serious “Veerle’s polish” I guess ;-)
9
Very very nice!
How did you do that liquid look? The colors are great!
If you ever need a topic for a new tutorial, please do one about creating liquid icons in illustrator :-)
10
And interestingly enough, it looks a lot like the following icon (exept nicer):
http://www.bryanbell.com/2004/09/24#a1151
11
@AkaXaka, that icon is the one I’m refering to in my article. I just brushed it up a bit ;-)
12
Veerle - very nice job! Do you fancy tackling MarsEdit too and making it a series?
13
Hi Jon, actually I’ve thought of this, so yes I’ll try to do it somewhere next week if time permits :-)
14
I’m glad you like NetNewsWire enough to spend this much time working on an alternative icon. It’s a really cool application.
As far as the design of the icon goes, I didn’t come to its look lightly. Balance, color, and style were all considerations. I wanted it to be distinctive and understandable at any size and on any background.
I chose a high contrast design because application icon appears in the dock, the Finder, and in applications dialog screens, most of which are nearly white.
15
Hi Bryan, yes NetNewsWire is a super cool RSS reader and I really like what they’ve done with the new beta version. There are a lot of handy features in there.
I like the idea of how you have visualized the icon (the composition of the globe and satellite). I see on your site that you have tried several designs. I especially like the satellite in the last version. Only the dark border makes the icon a bit hard which I like less, but apart from that I like what you have done with it.
16
I like Veerle’s icon but it does dissapear when it gets small or on lighter backgrounds like the dock. I think I will stick to the original. I guess that goes to show just because it looks cool, doesn’t mean it will work.
17
@Splif: Only if you set it 16x16px you could argue that it dissapears a bit. The thing is I have created this icon in about an hour or 2 and didn’t do anything to optimize it for such a small size. So for a quick task the result is pretty good. Also if you’re on 23inch cinema display why would you wanna see the icon that small :-p Mac OS X is created to view things big because it looks nice.
18
Any chance you’re feeling energetic and compelled to redo the ecto icon in this style too? ;P
19
I agree with Loek, can we pretty please have a tutorial on the liquid syle how-to?
The style is very beautiful, congratulations Veerle.