So there I was, working on my computer as usual, when I had a sudden inspiration as I recognized the arrangement of some application icons in the OS X Dock:
My first thought was “Hey, that’s fun! I wonder how many letter icons there are to build words in the dock. There could be an app for that.”
That was the moment Iconscrabble was born.
Unfortunately, I’m not a pioneer with this idea. Somebody put iPhone app icons in alphabetical order as a nice effect. Also, Mario Georgiou had the idea of designing an Adobe Icon Scrabble using the two-lettered app icons from the Creative Suite in 2006.
But no concept combined this idea in an art project that also incorporates informational value.
Warning: Tech Content
An hour after my initial idea, I had cobbled together a small PHP script that generates a composite image from single icon files and a given word. Every icon has its letter equivalent mapped in an associative array and the script uses GDlib to stitch the single icons together.
A central concept also includes the possibility to cover two letters e.g. by an Adobe application icon (like “Ps” from Photoshop). The webapp basically checks from the longest possible word fragment down to a single character and randomly decides which parts are used to render the composite.
The first simple script was extended with a user input field as well as a database backend to save the generated images. A unique permalink is assigned to each image so a composite can be saved or shared on the Internet. The implementation was done with CakePHP – my framework of choice when it comes to database-driven projects of this size.
Discovering new apps
A great side effect of the database support was the fact that every icon and logo could hold a name, description and URL of the service or brand associated with it. The concept was quickly adopted to implement an informational value for the user — Icons that are linked to the specific company, and tooltips that show you the brand behind the logo.
What users are scrabbling
In 10 days of uptime, 5.351 icon composites were generated. The top 3 entries are Love, Hello and I love you, followed by the most common swearwords and raunchy terms on the Internet. However, most people just seem to feed their name to the generator which brings forward the obvious application of using an iconscrabbled name as doorplate.
I hope you like the arty and diffuse approach of Iconscrabble. We’re looking for letter-based icons from computer-related brands and companies all the time. If you’d like to help us, I’d suggest submitting your recommendations or comments via the Leave Feedback tab on the app’s site.
TweetPosted in Design, Developing, Geekery, Software, Tags:Design, generator, icon, projects
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