The Making of an Icon, Part 2

After I made the iOS icon, I thought that making an Android version of Anthropomotron would be a good idea as well. Coverting the code to work on Android was relatively painless. When I got to adding the icon, though, I saw that the Android icon design guidelines were very different from the Apple ones. In fact, some of the statements between them are complete opposites. Android icons should not be shiny and should use background transparency to make a unique shape. Apple icons should be shiny but have a square shape (which an algorithm will take and round the corners).

My conclusion was that I needed yet another new icon for the Droid version. Looking at their suggestions, they specifically do not want a cut-off object in the icon, so I went back to the full ‘A.’ They didn’t want subtle gradients and shading so those were gone. To give the icon a unique shape, I made the blue background a smaller square than the rest of the elements, so the femur and calipers stick out from the top and bottom, using transparent areas:

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