New Icons for Fern & Waterpoint

At the moment I'm working down in Perth for an Apple service centre called Digilife, I get to work on just about every mac available (except for models referred to as vintage) which is pretty cool. I will also be in the thick of it when the iPhone 3G finally launches here in Australia on July 11th, I'm counting down the days till I get my Black 16GB model with either Vodafone or Telstra. Now that the update is out of the way, I have been distracted from coding but have been working on a couple of graphics projects, including some icons and my new website.

One icon I have been working is the new one for Fern, 0.2 users will have noted that it uses the default operating system icon for an application. Fern 0.2.5 will rock a new text edit inspired icon that features materials and colours that related to the brand new interface. The icon is based on the two sheets of paper used by text edit but the similarities end there with a piece of wood as the backing sheet and a nice glossy front with stylish colours.

True Apple enthusiasts will notice the colour scheme is quite common for the company with the Apple TV 2, Mac OS X Leopard and the new Coldplay iTunes + iPod TV ad. The application is designed to be a consumer product so if they feel comfortable with the themes and stylings used by Apple, they will automatically feel comfortable with applications that use similar stylings. Unfortunately it's very possible that I will change the icon a little with each release until I think it's the best it can be :).

I have also been working on the Mac version of my first Windows application, Waterpoint, which is set to be finished within a few short weeks. A quick refresh of Waterpoint; is a Core Data powered application for rural users that enables them to quickly manage properties, paddocks and watering points. Tracking status and service updates of each individual item. The icon for this little app is finished and ready for the prime time. As the Windows users will notice it's the same design as the win version but with a different colour scheme, in fact it was one of the draft designs that ultimatly became the blue orb with the silver droplet. I redid this design (it was only 128x128) for Mac OS X 10.5 512x512 goodness, following the new colored gradient design featured in the Fern icon. I think it came out ok and has a rather impressive presence when sitting in the dock, the black stands out of the coloured crowd. The non consumer design is supposed to show a sense of power and profession ability without taking way the ease of use and design common with all top level mac applications.

Waterpoint uses a new interface that is similar to Coda and system preferences, as a test for use in some other higher priority projects. Stay tuned for more updates on Waterpoint 1.0, which will be a full release containing everything a 1.0 application should have. The next couple of weeks will be busy and tiring but thats justs part of the game :)