Overview
All application icons come with their share of challenges, but design for the iPhone is unique in that the audience expects a level of seamlessness throughout their interface. While this raises the bar of aesthetic beauty (which makes for a more creative design process), it is somewhat contradictory to the equally important goal of differentiation among a sea of applications.
RhodoSoft’s description of TreeTask:
TreeTask is an easy-to-use task manager for the iPhone and iPod touch that supports hierarchical tasks. Tasks can have subtasks, subtasks can have sub-subtasks, and so on ad infinitum. Every parent task has a progress bar that updates proportionally as it’s subtasks are completed. When all it’s subtasks are complete, the parent task is automatically checked off.
Initial concepts involved the use of literal branches, but these were abandoned for a lack of readability at small sizes. Instead, I opted for a solution which literally expresses the software’s memorable name, allowing the icon to be found more easily than if we forced them to decipher an accurate-yet-complex visual metaphor.
While early renderings bent more toward the default glassiness of most iPhone application icons, we felt the glossy sheen softened the depth and vividness of the image. The final version integrates with the iPhone’s level of saturation and richness, while maintaining a unique style all it’s own.
TreeTask debuted in the app store on January 16th, 2009.