Warning: the following short article can be concidered extremely geeky. I decided to write it during my daily iPhone ‘no service’ feedback while I travel between the Monstercave and my Monster lair. Instead of using Twitter or checking my RSS stream I have a period of 10 minutes when my iPhone transforms into an iPod touch. Thus as Interaction Designer I have some time to play around with free interactions. So thank you Tmobile, without your crappy service I would have never come across my new favorite icon.
Most designers will agree that Apple has created some of the loveliest icons over the past years. By creating the first dock icons they really set a trend. Apple managed to bring this sweet style to the iPhone by creating the home screen filled with detailed touchable icons to start the apps we use daily. These lovely detailed icons sometimes distract me from the cute tiny icons that help so much giving the user the little bit of extra feedback needed to make the iPhone user experience worthwhile. That’s why I like to share my favorite iPhone OS 3.0 icon with you and tell you how to enjoy it on your own iPhone.
iPhone OS 3.0 added a couple useful but not that exciting new features like copy/ paste and undo. The icon I’m talking about is hidden in the new spotlight functionality. Rather it’s hidden beneath the keyboard when using spotlight. It’s the magnifying glass icon next to the home screen dots. To fully enjoy the simplicity and beauty of this magnifying glass icon you have to do the following interactions:
1. Press the home screem button. It is visible but hard to see knowing the icon is 26% white on a black background:
2. Slide towards spotlight:
3. Slide an inch back towards the app icons until the keyboard drops down. Keep your finger or thumb down on the iPhone and there it is!
To enjoy it even more (yes, it is possible) just make a screenshot (press home screen + sleep button at the same time) while you slide from the home screen towards spotlight. It is possible to take screenshots of in between views of different home screens, but it’s not possible to do this while you are between the home screen and spotlight. Instead you take a screenshot of a keyboardless spotlight screen. Thus now you can not only enjoy the cute icon, but you can also zoom in!
Now you know about my favorite iPhone icon, what about yours?
PURRRR!
Just found a nice collection of free icons at OutlawDesignBlog:
http://www.outlawdesignblog.com/2009/free-icons-and-free-icon-sets/
You know you can also just swipe over to spotlight and then when the keyboard pops up just swipe it back down!
You want the spotlight icon in hi res? Yes?
Well here you (kinda) go: http://davewouters.com/stuff/iphone/resources/SBSearchPageIndicator.png (<-this is the spotlight icon used on the iPhone)
Which is based (read scaled-down) from the Spotlight icon used on the desktop version of OS X.
So HERE you go: http://davewouters.com/stuff/mac/resources/spotlighticon.pdf (open in Illustrator, invert colors, and you get the same icon that's used on the iPhone)
Hey,
I was just lazy sit at my desk, looking at your blog ; Do you know David Lanham ? He’s a great designer, did a lot of free icons you may love called “Somatic Rebirth”…
Hope u’ll love his monsters :
http://dlanham.com/art/somatic/
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