I thought I’d share how to build the iOS Icon Grid by way of a simple animation. This is the same method that is described step-by-step in the book ‘Icon Design‘. Phi – Golden Ratio Phi (golden ratio) plays an important…
Constructed between 1865 and 1868 in the Gothic Revival style, much of Auckland’s former Supreme Court (now Old High Court) building was restored in the late 1980’s as part of the High Court redevelopment. Stencilling features prominently in the restoration of…
Designed for Kelly and Jo from ‘You, Me and the Dream‘, these two round towel designs are based on the same proportional grid system that I use for designing icons. Golden Ratio The golden ratio was used to lay out the decorative elements…
Geometric Designs The following six geometric designs were drawn by following the instructions in Draw Islamic Geometric Star Patterns by Eric Broug. With seven examples, the book is a great introduction to drawing Islamic geometric patterns. The process involves drawing a grid…
Icon Grids for iOS, OS X, tvOS and Apple Watch I’m really excited to announce the long-awaited update to Icon Design. With two new geometrically derived icon grids for OSX, a tvOS icon grid and two Apple Watch grids, you…
With a referendum on whether to change the New Zealand flag, the opportunity to submit a design is an opportunity that is not to be missed. Apart from its similarity to and being mistaken for the Australian flag, there isn’t…
The Power of Form by R. W. Billings Years ago, I used to frequent the second hand book shops around Auckland for books on architecture and geometry. For the princely sum of $11.00 I picked up an autographed book called…
When it came to writing the book ‘Icon Design – Designing Elegant Icons’, I needed to create an icon mask for presenting my icon designs. The only way I could think of doing this at the time was to take…
The Golden Section and the Square Root of Two The iOS icon grid beautifully expresses two ratios. These ratios are the golden section (1:1.618…) and the square root of two (1:1.4142…). Any grid that expresses the golden section and its…
Unity & Harmony? For many designers, it’s not clear how Apple’s icons are unified. Yes, there is the limited family of bright colours, and there is the icon grid. On trawling the internet for comments about the grid, I have seen…
