The project has moved.

A dedicated website, with new features.

Follow this URL :

http://mapicons.nicolasmollet.com

Contribute or Make a Request

• Suggesting new icons
• Designing new icons
• The Templates
• About Transparency
• About Layers
• Basic Design Rules
• Share your icons
• Donations

Suggesting new icons

Suggestions are always very welcome. Before suggesting a new icon you should first look through the list of icon we already have in the Project Home tab. We have many, many icons so maybe we already have one that fits. Secondly you should look at the Requests part of all categories:

Administration, Office & Industry, Culture & Entertainment, Education & Kids, Events & Weather, Friends, Family & Real Estate, Media, Miscellaneous, Restaurants & Hotels, Sports, Health & Beauty, Stores, Tourism & Nature and Transportation.

This is where our own and others requests are listed. Lastly you should look at the Issues list to see if someone else already has suggested the icon and that we are already working on it. If you have done all this and still cannot find what you are looking for you are very welcome to make a new suggestion in the Issues tab.

Designing new icons

If you are thinking about designing some icons of your own there are a couple of things to consider. We use Photoshop and the free alternative Paint.NET to create out own icons and we follow the simple design rules & guide lines listed below.

The Templates

To make it easier to follow our design rules we provide you with the templates we are using with the official Collection Set Colors, the icon frame and the transparent fading background. You can download the template files from here:

• Paint.NET template (www.getPaint.NET) (icons with backgrounds category colors but without symbols)
• Photoshop Template (icons with backgrounds category colors but without symbols)
• Photoshop Template (icons with backgrounds category colors and many symbols)
• GIMP template (www.gimp.org) (icons with backgrounds category colors but without symbols)

About Transparency

You need to understand how to work with semi-transparent pixels, like in the pixels surrounding the icon frame. This to be able to create the icons looking a bit softer and with more detail then if you paint them with 100% color. Try not to use to much transparency, the icons will end up looking to blurry and avoid using less than 50% transparency since you wont be able to see them anyway. If you manage to make the icon with only 4 levels of transparency 0%, 25%, 50% and 75% you rock!

About Layers

The principles of working with Layers are also important since it will make your work so much easier. Layers are like transparent papers on top of each other. You find Layers in the in the templates provided above. Key to the icons designed by me is the Layer Blending Mode found under Layer Properties in Paint.NET. Icon symbols are never drawn on a background color, always in their own layer above the background color. This for many reasons one being to be able to easily be able change the background color.

Basic Design Rules

The size of the inner icon symbol should never be bigger then 20x20 pixels unless you really have to. Use common sense with size, a midget needs to be smaller than a giant even if they look similar in basic shape. White pixel color on the Collection Set standard background is the color for all symbols (except for the F,F&R Set where it is Black instead). This means that the Layer with the symbol can only contain White (and Black) pixels, with 0-50% transparency.

Share your icons

Once you have created a new icon you always have the option to share it in this project. Save the icon as an .PNG (or Optimized PNG) file, remember that you will loose the layer structure by doing this, and create a new Issue and upload it. If we decide to accept your design, you need to know that we will publish it under the Creations Commons Share-Alike 3.0.

Donations

If you feel this project is useful to you and want to support it and it's future development please consider donating money.