On a technical front, and in keeping with the 'open ended' concept I mentioned above, here is what I would strongly encourage you to consider. On the other hand, others like pencil- or ink- or paint brush-on-canvas, and for them, Gimp would be a better starting point. If you're like that, you'll probably want to start using Inkscape. Likewise with PNG: it's great for some platforms, but not others.Īnother consideration is what kind of an artist are you? Some people love to use illustration programs to do their art. However, other platforms cannot make use of it. SVG is perfectly-well supported in Linux as an icon format.

The other thing is to recognize the importance of open-ended materials in creating this project (which, since you haven't specifically said, I'm going to assume is a program) because of the potential for portability. This is not a perfect comparison (as any graphics professional would be quick to tell you) but just to explain things in reasonable generalities, think about it like this: Now, back to the specifics of the tools to use. On the other hand, maybe you want something very modern and rendered-looking, maybe glistening and shiny, etc. Now, you might want to do the icon in a 'dry brush on canvas' style, but you also want the design to reflect the fact that this is a folder. What I mean by that is you need to separately consider what 'style' you want to do the icon in, and what the appropriate 'type' of icon would be.įor instance, the end goal could be a folder icon.

Icons should be thought of as both pieces of art as well as pieces of functional art.

First off, take a step back from the tools for a moment and consider something else.

Inkscape vs gimp designs