The macOS App Icon Book
The macOS App Icon Book is a beautiful artbook dedicated to preserving the craft of app icon design. It’s a vibrant journey through the art of desktop app iconography for macOS. The book features hundreds of icons created by designers and developers from around the world over the course of more than a decade.
The icons in the book showcase conceptual and executional excellence in icon design and create a tapestry that tells the story of visual design on one of the most influential platforms of our time. It is both a source of inspiration and a historical archive, inspiring new work and preserving old icons for future generations.
I’ve backed the kickstarter and contributed some icons from the history of my apps, including an unreleased SpamSieve icon. They are still accepting icon submissions.
See also: Iconic:
With a breathtaking collection of unique photography, Iconic: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation takes the reader on a tour of the most visually stunning and important products produced by the world’s most innovative company — Apple. Follow Apple’s journey from 1976 through a photographic collection of their most important desktops, portables, peripherals, prototypes, iDevices (iPad, iPod and iPhone) and packaging.
Previously:
- Make Something Wonderful
- “Designed by Apple in California” Video
- The Secret History of Mac Gaming
- The Natural History of Palatino
- Shrine of Apple
Update (2023-12-19): Michael Flarup:
I have received my first advance shipment of The macOS App Icon Book. Here’s a little unboxing video showing off the finished book.
Update (2024-01-10): I received my copy of the book today, and it looks great.
There's something strange about the divide between the clean minimalist Apple hardware design and the garish icons that 3rd party MacOS applications use for their icons.
It's sneaking into their UI as well. I'm posting from an Arc browser, and there is this semi transparent, grainy texture in the tab bar. I would love to see Apple do hardware that was more in line with what their 3d party devs seem to like. I imagine it would look more like that famous Alessi Philips collaboration, or logitechs Pop Keys keyboard.
Or indeed, the first line of iMacs.
But Apple broke white squircle, and that's all she wrote.