Apple Watch App Icon Concept
Two weeks ago Apple just shared the new iOS 9.3 preview. It has so many pretty amazing features: Night Shift, improved News, Health, CarPlay and so on.
I have already missed one tiny thing since the Watch was released and that is a gorgeous icon. I mean I like iOS default apps except the right one.
I know Apple has many things to do so I decided to design my own version. At the weekend the weather was pretty cold outside hence I made a mug of damn good Muruta coffee by The Barn and chose a great company then I opened my Moleskine, Sketch and Medium.
Here you can follow my steps. Enjoy it!
Think
First of all I collected the constraints and wrote a short brief from them. It really helped me in my design process and gave me focus to keep on the right path and accomplish my goals. In this project I chose three constraints:
- One weekend – make it happen
- iOS design guideline – great symbol
- Think different philosophy – make it unique
Design
I believe in every great app icon has a great a symbol behinds it so I made a small research and found two symbols I can imagine as an app icon:
- Digital Crown
- watchOS
Apple Watch owners can easily recognize and love them.
At the end of the research session I chose Digital Crown as a symbol because I think it has a better potentional to make it unique:
- adaptive icon theme
- equal icon size
Adaptive Icon Theme
I designed individual icons for all the eight Watches:
- Watch Sport – Silver, Space Gray, Rose Gold and Gold
- Watch – Stainless Steel, Space Black
- Watch Edition – Rose Gold and Yellow Gold
So when you wear a Watch Sport – Silver, a Watch – Stainless Steel, or a Watch Edition – Yellow Gold you can usedifferent kind of app icons.
I prefer Watch Sport (I love matte finish!) so I show you all the four versions.
Equal Icon Size
I designed the app icon (92 px) same size as the physical (7.2 mm) Digital Crown so it can give you a familiar feeling.
As a last step I implemented the new app icon into iOS. I made a home screen and a settings screens with a new connected devices group: Watch, CarPlay and HomeKit.
At the weekend these tools helped me a lot, kudos to the teams!
- Sketch – pro digital design
- Design+Code – watchOS GUI
- Core77 – Apple Watch blueprint
- ColorHexa – color finder and tuner
So what’s next? Should I send it to info@apple.com? I don’t think so.
I’d love to use the power of this great community. If you like the post please help me to spread this idea and push the recommend button.
Maybe we can inspire Apple to consider redesigning the Watch app icon.
Many thanks!
Bence
Mobile, IOT & AI Designer
Twitter, Medium and Dribbble.
Ping me! I’d love to hear from you.
Collaborate with great teams like Makery.
“The mobile team you love working with.”
Here you can read more about my latest design projects:
Product Hunt Logo Concept and Medium Logo Concept.
