Creating an app icon

It isn't necessarily easy to create an app icon that stands out from the crowd, and we can't really cover how to do that in this chapter. This requires creativity, and there really isn't a set of steps that guarantee a creative result. But there are some general ideas that you can use to create an icon that will work for your app.

Here are some things that you typically find in great app icons:

• The icon plays off the brand or the logo. Note that this isn't the same as saying that the icon is your brand or logo (your brand or logo may not fit within the icon's size without modification, for example). Furthermore, this only works if the brand or logo is well-known (such as Facebook, Twitter, and more)
• The icon is distinguishable. That is, the icon shouldn't look too much like the other apps the user might have installed on their device. This typically means that you shouldn't go around making an icon that looks a bit too much like the Facebook...