Learning to do icons - any collection of tutorials for a start?

Question

I am a developer and really need to get to grips with graphics.

Even before settling on a specific tool, what I need is somewhere to go and learn how to do things, such as for instance a "save" icon. Problem is, I wouldn't know where to start and I am a total newbie in this regard. What is worse, googling without knowing pretty much anything on the subject isn't going to be really helpful, because, well, how can you tell good from bad? :)

Ideally, it should be a set of tutorials "building" up from something simple, say a square with an X inside :), to more complex things, such as a saving disk or "better". I am saying the square with the x inside because, well, if I do it it's awful, but I've seen pretty good ones :) so I guess there might be a better way to it :D

Do you know of any such place where I can start learning?

Thank you for any suggestion!

Andrea

Answer 1

You can do a lot worse than just picking a good set of icons and deconstructing them to figure out what makes them effective.

For tutorials, I found an excellent page on Six Revisions that links to excellent tutorials, introductions to icon design, and a good handle on what different apps do and the kind of results you can get. I've not examined all the linked tutorials, but the ones I did check look very useful for a beginner.

Answer 2

If you're looking for something simple but can be complex later, I'd try out http://IcoFX.ro

They even have some tutorials there on their site. Hope that helps get you started.

Answer 3

I think there are so many useful tutorial on net. Like smashingmagazine.com etc, and find inspirations from dribbble.com or forsst.com etc ;)

And if you eagerly to diggin' more, you can buy video tutorial by Sebastiaan de With - it was helpful for me ;)

Cheers!