Well, a very, very quick mockup from me just to show what I'm thinking:



(size: 48x48)

On reflection I'm not sure I like the gaps between the bars, so that could be removed to gain more space on the left hand side. The little flags are there to represent speed; the more flags, the faster the connection. For the wifi one I was going to have curved bars instead of straight, and the vertical space were the flag pole could then be used for the '!' and '?' to indicate problems.

Thoughts anybody? Or shall I pack my bags and go home.

I'm not sure if this would scale well to small sizes.

You should never pack your bags and go home! Shame on you for thinking that! You stay here!

I'd say the main issue with the icon might be that it would be too fiddly when its smaller and squeezed into the system tray. I think you are definitely on the right track when it comes to removing the spaces between the bars because that might make it feel less "fiddly" (thats now an official "designy" word btw ).

Remember that realism in images is often overrated so I think you can make the key more chubby and squeezed together even though I can see you have gone for a more realistic looking key

One method of going about it is removing bit by bit from your own icons and seeing when it starts to "hurt". How long it takes for it to be just a weird symbol no one can grasp - the step before that tends to be right.

What actually is wrong with the current icon theme?

Well there are some issues, first off it doesn't work as an in-between themes and styles perfectly which would be fun and helpful as that means the next person reworking them will have an easier time.
Second they lack the details in them which are the the fiddly bits. You can if you want to use the current icon theme and simply slap locks and exclamation marks (or what you may prefer as an indicator) on them. But that said - adding say some personal flair might be good.

Wasn't really thinking of space when I dreamt up the first one, have played about and redesigned below. You will be pleased to know that the flags and key remain, but have been re-imaged:





I think with a bit of shading and repositioning the key could look quite good. Also, the bars are a bit like pins in a lock, if you see what I mean.

Anyways. It's been a bit of fun for this evening.

Edit:

Messing around some more...



Edit, Edit:

Messing around even more... ( I quite like these)





****, semi-high speed secure signal:

@jensreuterberg
ah, ok.

@davidwright i really like the "Messing around even more" ─ but I don't know what are the principles in creating tray icons beyond being universal (mentioned by jensreuterberg) so that's just my personal opinion.

Well, I was busy bee last night and did some rough designs for the other icons. I'm not sure how to do the shading, and I think they would look better with that. Unless the idea is just to have strict one colour icons, and not allow shades of the same colour?

Feedback appreciated.











Wifi:





(Reminds me of 70s circuit boards!)

I prefer the your preverious attempt on wifi.

Dunno what the plan is, but lack of shading, round corners and extreme simplicty gives those icons very distinctive feel. Not sure if anybody else thinks those are pretty, but personally… I just like the way they are. But what about scaling? Plasma uses svg elements, and it scales tray icons with the tray itself. I think that after scaling those icons will look blurry and loose the distinctive, sharp, semi-retro look.

I understand completely. I'm not really a designer, in fact I've never designed an icon before in my life. But ideas were asked for, which is what I'm doing. Hopefully someone who actually knows what they're doing will come along and pick up the pieces!! But who knows, perhaps they'll just give up and keep the existing icons and shade them grey?

I am, however, enjoying myself. So I might have a look and see if there are any tutorials that tell me who, or what an svg is and go from there. Something tells me that my newley beloved KIconEdit is not going to be able to handle that!

These bad boys will end up gracing someones desktop eventually. Even if it's just my own!!

Take a look at the inkscape, single the best open application for vector graphics.

I am, however, enjoying myself.

That, my friend, is key to doing anything! Brilliant!
I don't know if you've heard but after things settle down a tad (there are a lot of stuff going on that all of us are doing individually) we will start doing short mini-courses, like one or two classes (probably video, we have have yet to hammer that bit out correctly) - aaaand we could do one about "making icons in Inkscape" if you want to learn that?

Inkscape is tricky - lets be honest. Its kinda counter-intuitive since it bases itself on different things than typical drawing programs (like Gimp or Krita). It doesn't mimic paint, brushes and that "click to make a dot" feel you might get elsewhere so there is a bit of a "speed bump" in the beginning but then it gets easier.

hmmmmm. I have a random idea.

Why do we need to limit ourselfs to single theme to fit all? Right now we have black and Vista-like oxygen as well as modern looking, transparent and smooth air. I propose to create two additional themes: something modern and pretty and to balance this: extreamly simplistic theme almost without transperency and round corners, with mostly flat gradients, very thin shadows, retro icons on the tray (like those) and colors following the kde color scheme: very traditional look, like in the mid 90s. We can call it workshop or something like this. If someone does not like oxygen style, he can use skulpture (which is amazing, btw). If he does not like air, he can use equally well made theme with very different approach. Voila, everyone is happy

plusfabi wrote:Since i work on them for current plasma-nm (not NEXT)
maybe we can keep some of them with minimal style changes

Nice icons.. i like the plane mode
(tough there are 2 or 3 i wouldn't know what they mean)

only thing.. really has it to be... yellow?

notmart wrote:

plusfabi wrote:Since i work on them for current plasma-nm (not NEXT)
maybe we can keep some of them with minimal style changes

Nice icons.. i like the plane mode
(tough there are 2 or 3 i wouldn't know what they mean)

only thing.. really has it to be... yellow?

I agree, Fabian made a really nice set of icons for plasma-nm and I think they fit quite well, even with yellow "indicators". They probably won't fit to Plasma 2, but it's still quite a lot of time to improve them, right? Anyway, I saw the rest of ideas for plasma-nm icons from @davidwright and they are quite a lot complicated and there are a lot of details in such small icons.