iPhone app icon: help me stand out from the crowd!

Ness Labs, Jonathan Ness

I am a part-time Mac / iPhone developer with a good app idea but zero artistic talent. I have been working for the last six months evenings and weekends on this application and it is finally done! I started playing around with application icon ideas myself and they were all _embarrassingly_ bad. They all looked like a 5 year-old drew them with a crayon, it was terrible. I love my app and its really going to help people - heck, it might even show up in an Apple TV commercial one day - but I need an icon that conveys what is different about my app and does so in a way that stands out in the crowded Apple app store.

This art will appear on the Apple App Store and on the iPhones of (hopefully) millions of discriminating customers worldwide.

Application icon optimized for 57x57 iPhone display. Also need 512x512 version of the icon depicting the same thing.

My application is all about connecting two people via their GPS coordinates and then providing directions and visual guides for one to get to the same location where the other is. I'd like the app icon to depict two people (or two people's smiling faces or two pushpins or two something) connecting, coming together, one coming to the other, one being directed by the other to a specific location.

The icon needs to be fun and shiny and alluring. Many of Apple's icons are stodgey and boring. For example the Contacts app, that person has no life, no emotion. I want the people (if you use people) to appear to have life and flair.

I have seen a few icons that I think do a nice job:

The MeetMe app has a great icon (http://www.aboutmeetme.com/images/l…r_ldnx.png). Super clear that two different things are coming together and I love the background depth with the soft vertical lines. I like their rounded square border.

I think the SpotMe app icon is also good (http://www.apptism.com/icons/000/00…1217563421). A little boring but good.

I have attached some sketches and failed terrible app icons that I made. Elements that I like:

- A windy road between two people
- Arrows
- Life, happiness, emotion
- Shiny
- Roundy
- No clutter