UI Challenge 05 - App Icon

The challenge for this was to create app icons. I went ahead and created three icons for three different, but very related apps. In my experience I have come across several apps out there that are incredibly similar to each other and all operated by the same company. They are designed to work in a series. For example language apps that are relatively exactly the same except one app teaches Japanese and the other teaches Korean. This allows them to cover a wider range of topics whilst making development easier and making user experience consistent across them all.

These app icons were designed for a series of philosophy apps that all functioned similarly to each other, but covering different specific philosophies. They were made to stand out from other icons by featuring a consistent color scheme (dark grey shape on bright color gradient), so that users can instinctually recognize they come from the same set of apps. These color combinations allow them to stand out, as well as the fact that their colored gradient background allows them a chance to "pop out" compared to the rest of the app icons where a "flat" design is featured more prominently lately.

There are also visual design reasons for why each icon appears in the way that they do. Each of the colors chosen and the logos I created were meant to be visual symbols of the philosophies they represent.

PS Stoicism, is blue, the color typically reserved for "logical" thinking, and features hard hexagonal shapes to represent a more structured orderly nature akin to Stoicism. Hexagonal shapes aren't typically found in nature until one goes down to a more atomic level to observe that reserved, natural structure hidden away.

PS Epicureanism is yellow, to represent a more instinctual desire to meet one's needs and to live a life of delight and comfort. Triangles are featured to represent changes like a "delta" would. It is upside down though like a "nabla" would appear, which represents gradients or "slopes" in mathematics. To me, this has to do with a sliding scale of pleasures and pain that Epicurus discusses. An upside down triangle is also said to represent the harp, and thus music. A simple pleasure.

PS Existentialism is red, the color typically reserved for passion and emotions. This philosophy is also more Romanticist in nature. The stars can be seen a symbol for those who follow their dreams, like stars and stardom. It can also look close to a pentagram which is supposed to a symbol of protection in Wiccan tradition but is popularly misrepresented as a sign of evil today. Lastly some popular existentialist philosophers, such as Sartre, have at times expressed sympathies for socialism.

I enjoy studying about philosophy in my spare time.