System Folders

Tuesday, 15 March, 2005 18:39

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

OK, so I've said more than once that I'm no fan of badged folders.  They're kind of difficult to decipher at small sizes.  Nonetheless, I've thrown together a couple of them here.  It occurred to me while building the home folder set of icons that I might as well build replacements for the four default folders installed by OS X at the top level of the hard drive as well.  And since the odds of the System and Library folders being needed in either the Finder's sidebar or the Dock are rather small, why not resurrect the old traditional badged System Folder while I was at it?

So there you have it.  Four icons make up the set, System, Users, Library, and Applications.  System and LIbrary are badged folders -- the Library folder just being a badged version of the Library icon included in the Home directory replacements set.  The Applications folder is the same as released in October of 2004, but is included merely to provide a complete set. 

Don't forget that if you wish to copy and paste the System folder, and possibly the Library depending on your system's setup, you'll have to change ownership to yourself temporarily.  Just make sure you don't forget to change ownership back to 'system' when you're done, or you might have all hell break loose next time you try to boot your machine.  If you're feeling really paranoid, you can use Disk Utility to repair permissions when you're finished copying and pasting icons to ensure that all permissions are what they need to be.

Home Directory '05

Tuesday 8 March, 2005 21:14

With the release of OS X, Apple introduced something rather unusual for the Mac OS—the concept of the home folder.  OS 9 and before had a shared environment for users, but Unix, which is the foundation of OS X, has separate user accounts available.  The default folders for each user are nice enough, but I've never cared for the miniscule badges on them.  I already know they're folders, so I'd rather have icons on them a bit more decipherable in column view, or at the pixel sizes more commonly used -- who keeps their icons at 128x128?

In 2001 I released the first set of home directory replacement icons (still available) , and they've been a consistent, if low-key, hit ever since.  After four years though, it seemed time to update them.  And this time, the set is complete.  All eight default folders are represented, including two variations of the music folder.  Of them, I'd have to say  I'm most pleased with the Library icon, pictured to the right.  Though my desktops are generally thrown together from scratch, the icons I've released are often variations on already existing artwork.  And while the LIbrary icon is loosely based on artwork from the .Mac website, it was created entirely from scratch.  The three dimensional appearance is wholly contrived.  The icon itself started as a simple rectangle layer in Photoshop, which was then manipulated, colored, and highlighted with gradients to create the raw image before converting it to icon form.  Rather a fun process, actually.

The icons in the set are mostly just updated versions of the ones released in 2001, but they gain the benefit of a few years of learning how to better produce icons for OS X.  Hope you like them.

Applications Folder

Friday 1 October, 2004 21:11

You know, I could easily delete my copy of Photoshop today, and still have probably a year's worth of goodies to post to the site.  Sad, but true, as most of my twiddlings in Photoshop never see the light of day.  Case in point, this little icon, made way back in 2001.  Replacing the stock badged Application folder icon with this is one of the the first things I do with any machine I use for any length of time.  I've always preferred having one-click Dock access to my applications, and I'd rather have a proper Applications icon to glance down at rather than yet another folder in the Dock. Come to think of it, I don't have any folders in the Dock without a completely custom icon.  For whatever goofy reason, folders in the Dock offend my sense of æsthetics; they don't match the style of other icons.  (I don't make a claim to be rational about this, you know).

At any rate, the icon's not original, just a blown–up version of the badge already provided by Apple with Mac OS X.  If you like to keep the Apps folder in your Dock, feel free to grab it. 

Projects

Saturday 25 September, 2004 17.21

The Icons section is back online in the Graphics Factory.  Meanwhile, here's one that was released long ago, but I've just recently realized that during a previous site-tweaking, I must have accidentally deleted it from the offered downloads.  It's back now.

Radios

19 April 2004 14.15

Here's something I meant to put together and release long ago.  I tracked down these images of classic radios way back in February—of last year—intending to do exactly what you see to the right, create a set of icons.  It's no surprise given the haphazard update schedule to the site, that I only just now got around to making them.

Nine icons make up the set.  Their usefulness is open to debate, but they look nice, which is all I demand from them.  Hope you enjoy  them.