Win a Collection of Beautiful and Exceptionally Useful Icons!
Resources. Leather bound book with green apple.
Its time for a new icon contest! Tell me what you want me to design for you! If you could pick one icon, that you’d have an enormous use of, what would it be?
I’m going to design a new collection of beautiful and handy icons. There will be around ten icons in the set, based on the ideas of the winners who’ll get the collection for free!
This time the theme is taking care of business, whether it’s the administrative aspect of your life such as filing taxes, planning your next vacation, dealing with your budget or running a small business, it makes it much more fun and easy when you can locate what you need with ease! Adding beauty to your digital space will make these tasks more enjoyable too.
As an example, this icon of a leather bound book and a green apple with dew from the Organizer Collection is an icon symbol for “resources”, but it would also work for “to read”, “legal”, “stash”, “research”, “reference”, “writing”, “book”, “learning”, “teaching”, “nutrition”, “tutorials” or anything else you feel that it represents.
Which files and projects do you need to find with ease? What kind of files and folders do you create on a regular basis? What do your most important and favourite projects look like? It might be an icon that’s a metaphor for documents that need printing, receipts from online purchases or sales, travel expenses, itineraries, art and crafting supplies, invoices, marketing materials, there are endless possibilities! You can enter the competition with one idea for an icon and one idea for the name of the set.
I’d love to hear if you have more ideas or thoughts around the project, but to make it fair to everyone, your main idea will be the one that you can enter the competition with.
The deadline for the icon contest is in two weeks, Friday 19th of March. So take the chance to influence this collection of icons with your ideas and thoughts and needs. Win the icons you really, really want! Please comment to enter the competition.
Tags: contest, digital environment, getting organized, giveaway, productivity, workflow, workspace
Here’s an idea – not sure if it pertains to how other’s work. At our agency, we take in a lot of content from clients. Images, text, documents, pdf’s. These documents are usually meant as resources in large corporate websites.
Something that’s very important is a way to quickly recognize a folder of “official & approved” final client content. Content or information that has been written by a copywriter, edited, reviewed by the corporation’s lawyers and then finally.. deemed ready for publication.
I am envisioning something that denotes “documents” but with an indicator that implies “official” or “approved”.
Make any sense?
Great idea!
My business is being a TV Director/Editor and I have lots of graphics, music, videos and scripts to keep organized for each and every production. While there are lots of icons out there for those individual categories (music, movie, artwork) I’m looking for something to represent the “Production” as a whole. A proper home for all that media.
So how about an icon that encompasses “Digital Production’ and all it’s associated media.
As for the collection name, I’d suggest “Time is an illusion”. As I never really seem to have enough of it to get things done.
I try and setup the next days work the night before, so I would love to see a today and tomorrow icon pair. I could drag files and resources here to prepare. I could even create a shortcut to my calendar and evernote pages in this folder. This might be helpful as I begin looking to add an assistant, if I were not in the office she could easily see who needed to be called and what needed doing/rescheduling.
I would like you to design project icons. At this moment I have different small and larger projects which I am working on. The icon should be a flexible one , to use for different projects or more theme based. For instance lotus icons in different colours to mark the project.
As a manager, I frequently find myself updating employee information for my team. Since these are files concerning real people, using a generic folder icon just seems blah.
The work we do as a team is a collection of the individual effort of some really great people, and I’d like an icon that represents that.
With everyone so focused on the internet and digital medias I have been giving a lot of thought to more anachronistic ideas on how to best illustrate concepts.
Instead of a legal pad and pen, or PDA, you could use an icon with a parchment and quill, as it illustrates the same thing, but draws the eyes in another way.
Instead of a filing cabinet a classical library, instead of a truck for logistics a horse and cart, that sort of thing.
The idea is of course to convey the same meaning but to break from the norm a bit, to draw the attention from the menial task ahead and provide a bit of escapism, all in one simple click of a button.
A folder with a clear reminder that it contains overdue items would be nice. I’m working on some kind of folder/organisation/smart folder system that as well as running to do lists would also keep track of over due documents, images, reports etc. Having a clear image representation of late, or overdue for the folder icon would be very useful!
Dearest kate, this is such a great idea and an exciting contest! Let’s see i often deal with alot of design ideas document for my craft projects, inspirational photos and art clip for my inspirational boards. Would be nice to have a personalize set of icons to keep them neatly in each folder with a special icon.
I’m thinking inspirational key words as the name idea like “Dreams come true”
Have a lovely merry happy weekend and love to yoU!
I would like to suggest making the boring side of creative business beautiful and designing something to entice me to do my money stuff more regularly! The icon I would like is one for accounts while the set could include invoices, accounts, receipts, insurance documents, tax, and such like. The set could be called something cheesy like money makes the world go round or money moments to remind me to take time out to update my accounts.
Hello, first thought, I am doing the family tree and I would love something that reflects the idea of family and times past with some add on icons to mark the difference between census records, birth and death, marriage and of particular interest to me right now WW1 service and medal records.
How about some to mark paternal and maternal lines as well.
Hope you like the idea.
much of running my biz revolves around the internet. I have folders of links, resources, projects I want to do, patterns, photos to post on my blog and ones to post in my shop, item descriptions in the works, folder of various versions of my logo and banner (for different online applications) . Maybe this kind of collection could be called something like “This Online life”, or “My Online Life” or something along those lines.
love the idea of this contest! Can’t wait to see the winning idea come to life!
I seem to have a similar request as others here. I have a folder on my desktop (where by the way I try to have no more than 4 icons at a time to keep things tidy) and that folder contains everything that is in “flux” meaning all the downloads I have to get to, images to work on, pdf’s to read, etc. It’s basically a folder where I drop all my temporary items.
I’ve tried using a clock icon, a calendar icon and an icon with arrows to show the “flux” or “transition” of the items inside but none have really expressed it just right.
Concepts that come to mind are “traffic” (in a good way), “back and forth”, “stream”, “current (as in water)”… is that crazy?
Anyway, thanks for the great idea and congrats on your work.
Hi, great to meet you! I just happened across your site and I love it. Good for you and great work!
Regarding your request for ideas, here are my thoughts.
I spend a lot of my time organizing my activities in three areas: home/finance, design/writing/website work, and personal information (e.g., medical records, etc.).
To focus on one of these ideas (writing/blogging), how about ‘Brainstorm’ for the icon to represent the random ideas I try to capture for future writing projects and ‘Writing Tools’ for the name of the set?
In the age of blogging and social media, I think this could be a quite popular set.
Have fun and thanks for asking for our ideas!
:)
I just wanted to pop in to say that I’m blown away with the thoughtful and inspiring entries that you’ve already contributed! I can tell that it’s going to be hard to pick the winners!
Don’t feel bad if your entry is similar to someone else’s, or if you want to say that an idea already posted would be useful to you too, every single contribution really matters. Keep your ideas flowing.
Bit different, but while at work I still think often of our children and the grandchildren. I have great photos of them and would love to see a couple of unique and creative icons to place the kids in.
Gee, Kate, my idea may seem too tame
I like IPHOTO but find organizing it a bit daunting.
I would like some icons that might look like a photo frame with spaces for nine photos . Each separate icon would take up a different position in the overall frame. Does that make sense? the categories could be family, children, nature, trips, events, friends, family history, etc. Can’t think of a title.
Hi Kate, it is so generous of you to host a giveaway!
I think it would be nice to have icons for organising information related to my blog. ie. an icon to denote the blog, then subfolders for blog posts. Also, icons for e-courses, creative projects, inspiration – ie. home decor, accessories, photos, art, craft, textures, graphic design, fashion, colours etc could be good. Also a Travel theme could be another idea (am collecting ideas for travel at the moment!) Hope this helps! :) Wini
This is an amazing giveaway, Kate…and just all around wonderful idea! I will have to give this a deeper think… Everyone’s ideas so far are great! Wishing you a very happy week, my friend :o) ((HUGS))
I would love to have an icon that depicts “media” of all kinde – newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc.
One could make a set of icons wherein there are icons for each kind of media – one radio icon, one TV icon, one magazine icon, one newspaper icon, and maybe some other media as well – and one combined icon with all media as one symbol – that would be useful.
Another useful icon would be something that symbolizes blogs, blog pages.
I could come up with dozens of ideas, but this will do for the time beeing.
Hi there Kate! Medical records, appointments and perscription information as well as Medical Insurance information—especially important to keep up with because my husband and I are caregivers for his parents who are quite aged—and complicated—ha–need I say more? Take care now, sandy
I’m a writer of short stories, poetry, and joint word/photography projects. I get too “forgetful” at times, jumping from project to project but I seem to always default to trying to organize by “docs” “stories” “photos” and “projects”. I need ways of distinguishing revisions, updates and “altered” as opposed to original pictures. I detest icons that look like cartoons and am always wishing I could have some that appear to be more like actual objects: pens, pencils, books, paper, etc. You already have some individual ones in your collections, but I would like some specifically for a writer, if that makes sense. I want to smell the ink and feel the paper texture when I look at them, if you get my drift. Thank you for your work.
I’m redesigning my freelance consulting blog. My services include philanthropy strategy and event production. Can never find a fun modern icon for a current event that doesn’t look like a film or movie icon (or weddings). I’m new to your site and loving it!
Dear Kate, i hope you are doing well and having a great week so far. Have a lovely merry happy day and love to you!
There are some business and money related files (e.g. important receipts, payment records, URL’s to business related pages, copies of business related emails, copies of articles and how-to’s that I often reference, etc.) that are so important to my business that I keep them in a folder I call the “Safe.” The folder is not locked or stuffed, but the documents in it are important enough to call it a Safe. I have seen icons for locks, tumbler and key, but I have not seen a really good Safe icon. An icon of a small, old-fashioned office Safe would be great. Thanks for a great contest and good fortune to you, Kate England.
I really need folders to help with two projects I’m on. One is for my blogging life. I need an organization system to house that under one roof.
The other is the book I’m writing. It’s in different sections and eventhough I have folders, it’s not as organized as I would like. So here is my suggestion for these folders.
Blogarama and Writearama. I’m sure I could find those on my desktop.
Take care.
I could use an icon called “Dreaded Report Which Takes Days to Produce Which No One Reads But The Boss Wants Done Even Though He Doesn’t Read it Either”.
Believe me, it would get a lot of use.
Hi Kate,
I am looking for an icon which represents my sketches (mockups) which I do everyday as an UI designer. I imagine it to be a pencil or marker drawing lines on a sheet of paper.
The title of the collection should be ‘design process’, from finding interesting and inspiring user interfaces while browsing the web over sketches to prototypes.
You are doing a great job in creating beautiful icons.
Thanks!
/Annelie
I would LOVE icons that represent inspirational living — gratitude, giving back, meditation, visioning. I can’t imagine that would be an easy thing to create.
Thanks for taking the suggestions. I’m sure whatever you create will be amazing!
Thank you for all your bright ideas! It’ll be a tough job to pick the best ideas among all these brilliant thoughts! I’ll let you know when I’ve made a selection. Again, many thanks for participating!