A beautiful hardcover book that celebrates the art and craft of app icon design
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Finalising the Book 🤹♀️
about 4 years ago
– Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 01:19:59 AM
Hi everyone 👋 I hope you had a great start to 2022! I'm just checking in with a quick update on the progress we're making on the book and to let everyone know that we'll sending out surveys soon.
📔 Book Updates
We've spent these past weeks working towards finalising the book. We're making weekly 'builds' of the huge InDesign document and iterating on the many different things that all has to come together in the final files.
I'm happy to report that we've added 10 more pages to the book (!) consisting of new icons that's been submitted during and after the campaign along with a new artist spotlight! This means the book will be slightly heavier than what we initially thought, subsequently moving us up a shipping weight bracket. We'll have a clearer picture once the book has been printed and weighed and we have survey results with exact adresses— but we're not concerned and we think the extra pages have been totally worth it!
One of the newer spreads added to the book with the full history of 1Password App Icons on display.
It's a bit hard to capture everything that's going on in these weeks. We have a full Trello board with everything from minor edits, consistency fixes to image captions and overall structure. It's a living document and it's changing daily. The team has all had a chance to read through the book in it's entirety. Marc Edwards first reaction was priceless 😂
We've also been doing test prints. These are actual size spread on heavy 170mg A3— It’s going to look even better when printed on a real offset printer (and not just my Canon Pro 200) but app icons on paper works just as good as I had hoped. I mean, look at them 😍
There's a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes. Coordinating with Printers, securing a place for storage and packaging and preparing a little extra surprise for everyone. It's all coming together. Despite the added pages and the flurry of work, we're still on target to ship in April. I'll let everyone know if that starts to slip.
📝 Surveys
We're working with Backerkit to send out Surveys. When we're ready you'll receive an email from them with a link where you can confirm your order and fill out your shipping information. You'll also be able to add more books to your order, should you wish to do so. They'll all be part of the first edition print. I'll publish another update when the surveys have gone out.
If you know someone who missed out on the campaign, we're also accepting pre-orders on appiconbook.com. Orders placed there will all go into the Backerkit system.
I'll return with more info about the surveys when they go out. If you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out through Kickstarter or on Twitter. 👋
— Michael
1450 Thank Yous! 🥰
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 01:43:29 AM
We did it! We got the iOS App Icon Book funded with a whopping 1362%. When the timer ran out on the campaign, 1450 backers had pledged €136,420 (approximately $155.000 USD or 1.000.000 DKK 🤯). We're the most crowdfunded publication ever to come out of Denmark. We've sold around 1600 books and are looking at a much larger first edition print than I had ever dared dream of.
It's been an absolute pleasure running this campaign these past 30 days and while I'm happy to close this chapter of fundraising I want to thank everyone for the support and the many kind messages. What a crazy thing we did here.
Here's what it looked like when the campaign clock went to zero 🎉
Interviews & wrap party
This past week has been a flurry of getting things ready for the end of the campaign. One highlight was the Interview I did with James McKinven (hosted by Iconfinder). We talked about why anyone would make a physical book about app icons and what really goes into running a Kickstarter campaign. You can watch the inverview here👇
We also had a twitter space wrap party to celebrate the end of the campaign. The team answered questions, celebrated and talked about our favourite parts of the book. It was good fun and the perfect way to end this part of the journey. You can relisten to the recording here → https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1DXxyDnmPYnJM
What happens next?
Kickstarter should now charge your pledges and you'll get an email from them with the details. Backers with unsuccessful payments should make sure that their pledges goes through to keep their reward. Kickstarter should transfer funds to us around the end of the year.
This is normally when people send out surveys for you to register your shipping details— but I have decided not to do that during the holidays. Sending out surveys is stressful and precision work and the chances of people missing them during their vacation is big. Instead we'll be sending out surveys early next year.
Can the book still be purchased?
There's technically no reason why we should stop increasing the first edition print run until we're ready to place an order with the printers. There's going to be a lot of people who will continue to discover this project in the coming months and we'd like to add them to the family of app icon book ambassadors. I have set up a pre-order on appiconbook.com that integrates directly with BackerKit that we'll use for fulfilment. Please feel free to direct anyone interested in the book there. A pre-order button has also been added to the Kickstarter page itself.
Once we're ready to start shipping out books, Kickstarter backers will obviously have priority and we'll fulfil pledges in the order they came in. We're also working on a little treat for everyone who have supported us, but I'd like to keep that a surprise till you receive your books next year. 😉
Happy Holidays
I'm Incredibly proud of the campaign and so grateful for the support and trust you've placed in me and the team. I think it's going to take me some time for this overwhelming result to sink in and, honestly, after 4 weeks of high intensity campaigning I'm very much ready for some rest and family time.
I'll be back in the new year with progress on your books.
I hope you have a great and safe end to the year.
The last 48 hours of the campaign ⏰
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Dec 08, 2021 at 11:11:31 PM
This is it. The last 48 hours of the campaign (less, depending on when you read this). The campaign ends this Friday the 10th of December at 10PM (22:00) CET. Here's everything you need to know before we cross the finish line together!
Add more books to your pledge and save on shipping
Last chance for add-on books
This is your last chance to add any additional books to your pledge. Simply edit your pledge and use the add-on of +1 📖 Book to add additional books. Shipping on every book added is cheaper. Why add more books? Well, even with the overwhelming support this campaign has received, the first edition print run is still relatively small (probably around 2000 books). I hope to make the book available after the first production run (maybe even one day in real stores), but that's all quite into the future— so books from this first order is going to be kinda rare and any leftover stock will probably sell out quickly. So if you've been contemplating this as a unique gift for someone, or maybe you'd like to get one for your office, NOW is the chance to expand on that first edition print goodness.
We're also planning a little exclusive Kickstarter backer goodie but I'd like that to be a surprise for when you receive your books. 😉
We want to celebrate the end of a great campaign. In a pandemic world with a team spread across multiple countries that means an online gathering of sorts. We've decided to host a Twitter Space on Friday starting at 9PM (21:00) CET. Everyone from the team will be there. We'll talk about the book and answer any questions you might have and we're just going to have a good time.
None of us have ever attempted a Twitter Space before, so I'm sure it's going to go over smoothly 😂. We'll try to record the session and make it available afterwards for anyone who wants a recap.
The last push
If you haven't already inundated your followers and friends with news of the book, now is you chance to make a difference for the campaign and share the project. Seriously every tweet & IG story helps. I have updated the marketing assets for the book with some nice new gifs and images and you're more than welcome to use any of this material.
Thank you again for your tremendous support. I hope to see some of you in the Twitter Space on Friday to help us count down the clock.
Preserving Icon History 📲
over 4 years ago
– Mon, Dec 06, 2021 at 02:16:56 PM
When I first got the idea for this book it was primarily because I wanted to own a beautiful artbook dedicated to a craft I loved. I wanted the tactility of running my fingers down the page and rifling through it for inspiration and admiration. I wanted to put a spotlight on an often-overlooked part of design and give it the rightful attention of a physical object dedicated to it.
However, over the past 4 years of working on the book, another reason for it to exist started to become very clear: this art is being lost to time. As the editorial search for our favorite and most memorable app icons deepened, it became clear that many of the apps from the past decade wasn't around anymore. Apps have been removed from the store, sunset or sold. The history of their iconography slowly fading into obscurity. The search to find legal contacts and salvage decade old design files became an act of digital archaeology.
🕰 For future generations
Marc Edwards is writing the foreword for the book and he put it so succinctly. Here's an excerpt:
"Sadly, today none of the early apps can be run in their original form on new iPhones. Even the app icons themselves have largely been lost to time. Software and digital artwork are both easy to replicate and easy to destroy. The modern era of software is often tied to servers and systems that are larger and far more complex than a single device. Early cartridge- and disc- based games have been fairly easy to preserve — if you have a Nintendo Entertainment System and a game cartridge, you can play the game. But this is not possible for iPhone apps. To run an old iPhone app, you’ll need an older device, and for the related cloud services to be running as they were at the time. Modern software is in a strange place where it is more at risk of being erased from history than software created in the pre-internet era. If we don’t preserve these things now, while we still have the opportunity to, they will be gone forever.
The cultural significance of the iPhone means we have a responsibility to preserve these creations for future generations. I believe this book plays an important role in doing just that." — Marc Edwards, Foreword for The iOS App Icon Book
It was when I read Marcs words that it really hit home for me, the work we had been doing all along. What started as a goal to celebrate a craft, somewhere along the way, turned into the equally important quest of preserving it.
This book features live and evolving app icons but it also showcases work that has already disappeared from the App Store and our devices. Most of our work as digital designers are incredibly ephemeral. What we do today might be outdated and updated in a short timeframe. Pixels are a fragile legacy to leave behind.
I was asked the other day, why I'd want to go through the trouble of making a physical book about such a digital discipline. This is why. With every book we're preserving the history of app icons.
⏰ The last week of the campaign
The campaign ends this friday! (21:00 CET). We're planning a little wrap-party starting from around 20:00 CET. Right now it looks like it'll be a twitter space where we can do a little Q&A and have a beer as the clock runs down on the campaign. I'll post more about it once we get closer— but we'd love to see you there.
Trying to drum up some last minute media attention and I've got a bunch of podcast appearances planned. I'll share some links when that content is available.
I look forward to crossing the finish line of the campaign with you.
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Collecting App Icons 🔍
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 07:00:13 AM
Putting together a book is hard on its own. Now add that your primary content is artwork designed for another medium — digital screens. Oh, and that content was produced over the span of a decade under varying changes in pixel density, aesthetic detail, and ownership of intellectual property. In short, it wasn't easy. Here's what I wrote in a blog post back in May, 2018:
"I realised very early on that the biggest challenge with this book wouldn’t actually bewriting it or even selling it. It would be getting the legal consent from hundreds of artists throughout the world to print their work. I think this might be the single biggest contributor to why this hasn’t been attempted before in this space."
I was unfortunately right. Even with the legal framework I describe in that post, it's been an incredibly time-consuming part of putting together the book.
Finding, curating, and legally getting approval to print hundreds of artworks from individuals and organizations from around the world has been one of the hardest things I have ever worked on. Many of the apps in this book aren't around anymore, and so finding the right people to deliver the art and sign the license agreements has bordered on internet archeology.
It's been a process of doing investigative work, finding icons we like, finding the people behind them and establishing a contact through whatever means possible. Following up with questions, licesense agreements and file handling. When people ask me why it has taken 4 years to make a 150 page book— this is exactly the reason.
Since launching this campaign we've had to start up that machinery again. A lot of people are learning about the book and so we're getting new app icon submissions. I planned for this and I'm happy that we might be able to add a few more pages of icons to the book as these late submissions are coming in. We're keeping the app icon submissions page open for a few more weeks.
If you have any iOS app icon design that you think should be considered for the book then feel free to use the form on the website. Just make sure that you only submit artwork that you have the legal power to license. If you have a favourite app icon, then don't be shy and share the link with the developer as a friendly nudge for them to submit their art 😉
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