Importance of Mobile Device Icons

When we speak of the iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and other mobile devices we are talking are talking about devices with limited scree resolution and this make the use of proper icons that much more important.

The term mobile device icons can be viewed in 2 different ways. It can be icons of mobile devices or it can be icons FOR mobile devices. We are speaking of the latter.

It's important to use small icons that are very clear in their meaning. Unlike a computer mobile devices don't always display both icon and descriptive word. In addition to this mobile devices like the iPad are often geared towards children and learning, and many children cannot read, but they have problem understanding the meaning of images. I can attest to this as currently neither of my children are reading yet, but both of them can use the iPad and iPhone better than most adults.

Use IconBug for your Mobile Apps

That all being said we are building a lovely collection of icons, most of which can be used commercially for your mobile devices and apps.

We prescale our images down to usable sizes and do it in a way that preserves the clarity and crispness of the original icon. For a scaling example please click the Android robot above when you are done.

How to choose the right Icon

Choosing the right app for your mobile module, section, function, action etc.. is super important and may be a bit more difficult. The icon must properly portray the process it launches with no room for confusion. Let's say you use a write icon that will allow your end users to add notes, and then use a similar icon for edit this can be confusing so it's best if you follow the commonly used norms to lower the risk of confusion if possible. In some cases however your apps function may be so unique that it requires an icon that is just as unique. In this case choose "uniquely". What we mean by that is choose an icon that represents the function but is also totally unrelated to any current icon you've used currently. The end user may not know what the icon is immediately but that's ok. Once the user has clicked the icon once they will then correlate that icons image with that application process and you are set. Better to do that than to choose an icon that is similar to a common function but that does something totally unrelated. This can be frustrating to the end user, and we want to avoid frustration at all cost.

Thanks for reading.
IconBug.com