Starting the Game - iPhone Game Blueprints - page 32

the combination of a cold main element with a warm background is not very com-
mon practice because the structure of such elements is not properly stable. So, it is
better to make cool (or dark) graphic compositions solid: with cool background and
coolforeground;warmelementscanbeusedonlyassmallemphasispointsbecause
they are much more active.
Note
Jon Hicks is the talented designer known for rendering the Firefox logo, working
on the MailChimp logo, Skype's emoticons, and many other amazing projects.
He also is author of the topic The Icon Handbook published by Five Simple
Steps .Onthisbook's official website, http://iconhandbook.co.uk/reference/chart/ ,
there is a very useful chart, showing specifications on most popular formats of
icons, including iOS, Android, Blackberry, and so forth.
Now, let's talk about the craft. The application icons should be rendered very me-
ticulously and professionally. There are several types of image sizes to be included
in a final package; it is worth noting that former guidelines were revisited after intro-
duction of iOS 7 in 2013 and icons became a little bit bigger (as did their radiuses).
The smallest ones are the legacy of first generations of iOS devices: 60 pixels for
iPhone and 76 pixels for iPad. They need attention to each pixel; this is not pixel art,
but some aspects of images should be edited at pixel level. The next generation of
iOS devices introduced double-sized icons: 120 x 120 pixels and 152 x 152 pixels.
But the most challenging is the icon artwork that is used by iTunes, which can have
dimensions up to 1024 x 1024 pixels! It's funny when you recall that nearly ten years
ago many desktop computers used a screen resolution equal to 1024 x 768 pixels,
which was less than the modern single icon has become.
The following screenshot shows the template used for the app icon used in the Rail
Maze 2 game developed by Spooky House Studios UG ( haftungsbeschränkt ):