Fabricating a Custom Icon in Android

Creating your own custom icons is way easier than you think; all you need is your creative imagination and a photo editor. See, it’s that simple and easy. You can choose any editor of your choices like Photoshop or a cloud-based editor like Pixlr.

In Android, there are radically four categories of icons:

•  Launcher Icons: The main icon of an app.
•  Menu Icons: The icons shown for apps when we go into the phone menu.
•  Tab Icons: The icons appearing in the tabs.
•  Notification Icons: Icons for app notifications.

For the image to be used as an icon, you can select any image that is available online and launch it using a launcher like Nova Launcher. Most of the icons are theme-driven and keeping that in mind, here are some notions that you can use for custom icons.

Emojis: Emojis are square images that are mobile cordial and used by every other person to express themselves. You can use these emojis to represent the app, how the app makes you feel, an experience that you can get with the app etc.

Music or movies: You can make the cover of a music band or a movie into a square shape and use it as your custom icon. The Fast and Furious cover can be used for a game app? String band’s cover for a music app? Etc.

Logos: Sports teams, clothing brands, accessories brands etc all have their own logos that you can use for custom icon depending upon what you are nutty for. All these are PNG images that you can use (at times) without editing.

While the above were the ways of picking your image for an icon, the ways to magnify or make it more artistic observed below.

Background: Select the area around the intended icon and try changing the color of it. If it changes to only black or white, that means that the image is locked. Try to unlock it using the available options and then put your creativity to improve the background image or colors.

Border and outlining: Borders and outline give a clean look and consistency to an image. Making border and outlining can be done in different ways like:

•  Use the brush of the Photoshop editor to make an outline of your icon.
•  Try the different outlines available in the ‘Shapes’ option to make an outline or border.
•  With the help of a magic wand in the Photoshop editor, you can create a layer and then copy paste it to create more layers thus creating icon stencil.

Icon size: Regardless of the size of your phone or screen resolution, you will see that the icons are small in size and appear the same. Thus saving the icon as a 500 pixel or 2000 pixel will make a very minute difference.

Furthermore, make sure that whatsoever your icon is, the canvas is square shaped and bit plain. Another thing to remember is to keep the icon in the center of the square. Save the custom icon in PNG format since it’s transparent.

Recolor icons: If the icon is splendid but the colors are dull or not in a good combination, then you can download using a downloader as PNG images and change the colors. You can also use a particular theme for coloring.

Take Away:

There are endless options and ways to create your own custom icon with no limitation other than your own fantasy. You can create custom icons for the launcher, menu, tab, and notification.