In our case though, it wouldn’t work well with the Open Labs logo. Instead of filling it with a color it can have a set amount of stroke width.

This monochrome logo is perfect for notification bar icons or other occasions where monochrome icons are needed.Ī different approach could be adding strokes to the shapes we can’t convey with the same monochrome color. We can make use of negative space and use the other half of the cut color (and may remind you of Pink Floyd). With the Open Labs logo it’s mostly due to 3 colors colliding in the same place (technically 2, but the lack of a 3rd and it’s blank space counts), so the shape would be not recognizable. The problem with many logos, as here, is that they might not work well as monochrome logos. Then we play with the remaining logo slightly until we get something we like the look of. We will not include the text, only the actual symbol. I decided to use a special icon (you will see why later), specifically the logo for Open Labs Albania, a great open source community in Albania. Let’s try to use the same concept for a custom icon.

The shadow is usually 45˚ diagonally aligned. For example in the Google Admin app icon you can see 2 main colors, but when the shadow is added, 2 additional colors are created. The shadow is a shape filled with black and a transparency of 22%, which covers the main color. There seems to be no general rules for implementing this kind of shadow, but experiment yourself and make your own mind up. You may notice the fake shadow implemented in the icons and other elements, which is unique to Material Design, but seen before (for example the Google Admin launch icon, released last year). Material Design is more simplified and uses contrast rich colors for its elements. You can find the Material Design reference and general philosophy here.Īndroid L generally has a different icon style than KitKat. I will point out changes throughout the tutorial. If you want to follow Material Design (as we will do in this tutorial) you will have to dig a bit deeper, as Android L and Material Design are not finished yet. Note: The link above is the style guide for Android 4.4 KitKat. Before we begin you should check out the iconography reference guides on the Android Developers site.

How to add app icon android studio