Why are icons addictive?

[conuly]

You'd think 50 would be enough for anyone, but now I want more. Maybe 100... Hm. I'm hardly about to reiterate the oh-so-popular suggestion, but any chance, do you think, of people being able to buy ever more icons... *plots and schemes*

Yes, I know, this is pathetic. Sorry. While we're on the subject, why do so many people make icons that all look alike? Is it just that they all decided that they like this one style, so they're only going to make icons in that one style, even though it's virtually impossible to distinguish one from another? And what's with the tiny text? If a person with normal eyesight is unlikely to be able to read the text, don't you think it should be made a little larger? Maybe?

Comments

[ciara-belle.livejournal.com]

I really don't get the whole decorative text thing either. I mean, it's text right? That says something? What's the point of having it there if I can't see what it says?

I was under the impression that the picture part of the icon was the decoration part.

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that the picture part of the icon was the decoration part.

Heeheehee! Totally.

[feathered.livejournal.com]

One of us should post that to OI at some point.

I hate unreadable text so much. But not as much as I hate text brushes. Of course, anyone who has ever heard me talk about icons should know this already.

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

Text brushes make me roll my eyes. If you have a program that can use brushes, you could also, I dunno, write your own text!

[feathered.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

You know, I found a community for them when I was looking for an example for Uly. I thought that they couldn't get any worse, and then I saw improperly aliased text brushes! (http://www.livejournal.com/community/touchoftext/11040.html). Which just goes to show that one should never think to themselves that it couldn't possibly be worse.

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

hahahaha!

A sad thing for the world of icons.

[conuly]

What's a text brush?

[feathered.livejournal.com]

Behold the horror of text brushes. (http://www.livejournal.com/community/touchoftext/)

Brushes are things that one can download and use to decorate an icon. In the beginning, icon brushes were used for textures and borders, but lately the big craze has been to take a line from songs, poems, or greeting cards and turn it into a brush. It would kind of be like taking a block of text and making it into a stamp. I HATE icon brushes. They take away the last vestige of originality -- the text content and placement -- from the sheep among the icon makers. I realllly wish they'd never been thought of. It doesn't take THAT much effort to pick a font and a line of text and put it on, and it is one of the areas in which you can exercise the most control and creativity. Icons aren't really all that original to begin with; after all, you're using somebody else's picture, someone else's brushes, and usually someone else's words. It's how you do it that pushes the activity close to being "art," even if it is a kind of bastardized form. Text brushes take away the creativity, and make the process into mass production more than anything. I would even say that they degrade the activity as a whole, even if there are a lot of people who don't use them.

[/rant]

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

Brushes are pre-made shapes that you can load into PS or PSP, and pick a color, and paint them on. They come in all sorts--some make it look grungy, some make it look patterned, or textured, or brighter, or darker.. And there are brushes that people have made by typing something in, like "sadness is a color" or some other poetic thing, and then post it for the world to download and paste on instantly. So there's people running around with icons that have the same phrase in the same size and same font.

Hm, I ramble. That might have made sense, though.