Re: [Geary] Symbolic Icon

[Stephen Michel <stephen michel tufts edu>]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 6:53 PM, Michael Gratton <mike vee net> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 4:10 PM, Stephen Michel 
> <stephen michel tufts edu> wrote:
> > [1]: a png and the svg source: http://stephenmichel.me/geary/
>
> On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 10:19 AM, Federico Bruni <fede inventati org> 
> wrote:
> > I think that a possible problem with the current icon is that the 
> > two lines (and spaces) below the letter take almost half of the icon 
> > height, therefore making the letter small. While the letter is the 
> > item in the icon which, of course, communicates the meaning most.
>
> Yep, I agree about the small size of the envelope in icon, but I do 
> also like the design of the current colour one as well.
>
> For that reason, I'm personally in favour of the two right-most icons 
> in the top row. They retain the feel of the colour icon well, while 
> also enlarging the envelope compared to the existing symbolic icon.
>
> Anyone else want to join in the bikeshead? :)

I agree with Mike that it is important to retain the feel of the color 
icon. I also think that is is a good thing to use the entire space 
available for a symbolic icon. However, I think Federico's point is 
more important than either: the most important job of the symbolic icon 
is to communicate the meaning quickly.

In order to do that, the icon must be simple enough to recognize at a 
glance, and we get that through emphasizing the key features. Over the 
past few weeks I've used several versions. The easiest to recognize was 
the one directly under the color icon. I've gone ahead and made a 
second version of the icon which is a blend of that one and the icon in 
the upper right corner. It's at the same url, quoted above.

I should clarify that the envelope is the same size in all of the 
iterations, including this one, because I didn't want to touch the 
dimensions/ratio. There's a bit of room to play around with this 
version of the icon, and I do think it would be beneficial to shrink 
the bottom line a little and make the envelope have a slightly larger 
height. I'll see if I can find time to do that cleanly later this week. 
I'll also experiment with wider lines on the envelope.