PyrusMalus | Design

Icon Design

VueScan

PyrusMalus have been working with Hamrick Software to create new icons for their VueScan software

VueScan is a highly-recommended scanner application that not only runs on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Mac OS 9; but also supports over 500 scanners. Not only is it easier to use than most scanner applications, it typically creates higher quality scans than the software that comes bundled with the scanner.

Application icon

The final application icon features, not unsurprisingly, a scanner with a piece of paper flying in to be scanned. The icon was created so that it wouldn’t look out of place on the three platforms the software runs on: Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows XP.

Initial concepts

When starting out on a new application icon we like to look at different possibilities for representing the concept itself - in this case, the scanning process. We also experimented with a number of concepts that involved pixels.

Ultimately, however, we decided that the best approach would be to represent a more photo-realistic scanner, and a number of different configurations were tried out.

The closed-lid configuration worked well, but wasn't dramatic enough, while the open-lid configuration not only presented a more interesting image, but opened up possibilities for more subtle lighting and shading.

The scanner artwork was created and shaded in Illustrator, with additional details - particularly the drop-shadow - added in Photoshop.

Guided tour icons

Another aspect of the redesign process was the creation of six illustrations for the Guided Tour mode of scanning. These illustrations were designed to add visual interest to the individual pages of the tour, and to indicate to the user what stage they were on.

Initial concepts for these icons were created to represent the activity at each stage.

We decided that a useful way of relating the journey that a scan goes through was to keep the scanned image in the same place on the pages of the tour, and to place the other imagery related to that staged around the image. Thus, the page remains in place while it is cropped, or filtered, or saved.

The illustrations are designed to be placed on the pages of the guided tour, to lead the way through the scanning process.

For more information

For more information, visit the VueScan website.