I’m making an icon for a speed reader app for the iPhone. These are more or less the designs I’ve been toying with:
Looking at them though, I just find they’re a little boring. With the iOS 7 paradigm they seem to fit okay, but I just want them to be a little more exciting.
To illustrate what I mean, I really like the icon for Lumo:
It’s very simple, similar to mine, but has a lot more character to the icon. I only don’t like the long shadow thing.
How can I spice up my flat iOS icons? (I’ve tried really hard to avoid the word “pop” :))
Answer
I think what you’re looking for is very similar to this recent question:
How to achieve a gradient in adobe illustrator
The issue is that a lot of what seems flat in the latest UI trends really isn’t.
There are subtle gradients and hard edged shadows all over the place.
As I noted in the comments, I think the main thing you are noticing is how your very nice icon separates from the button shape: Yours looks like it’s sitting within the shape, the Lumo example appears to float or protrude above.
On your green background you could
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Add a subtle top to bottom gradient
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Overlay that gradient with a hard-edged glass highlight
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Add a hard-edged shadow dropping from the book at about 45°
Just those simple changes will have you much closer to your envied example.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Doug Smith , Answer Author : Community