Building Formula: A close look at the icon

Formula is a great product and is receiving a lot of great feedbacks and since the beginning of this year, I was planning to make a full redesign to it, for two reasons: 1) I can and I love to code 2) it?s growing fast and the sometimes it fails within the design.

So, this past week I?m developing a lot of great stuff (my beta club already knows what going on), and one of the things that I was dying to solve was the Formula Icon ? and let me just say that: When you install Formula on your computer it will no longer be called: ?Formula ? Universal Code Editor?, but only ?Formula?. Simple.

But the problem that I was dying to solve, was a design issue: especially the file icons and the icon that was showed on the taskbar. Look at it, it?s ugly. It has some blue borders, it is un? yeah? not good looking. Not good looking for a professional application ? and a paid one!

One of the firsts things I did was to make the tile transparent ? yeah! You can celebrate that! After the Dark mode support, this was the top 1 feedback I received about design. After solving this I tried some icon changes, and, well, it was not looking great too.

None of those was looking great (except maybe the second one). So, I tried a new approach, just remove the blue thing.

Yeah! Now it is looking great. Yet, something bottles me? You only see the inside draw if you paid attention. Let?s make it bigger then.

No, definite not! This is not great at all? someone please delete it! I can?t deal with this icon. Why am I still looking to it? Too big, too messy, too much. No!

And before I continue, you should know that I tried without the octagon, but this is my brand, and only the inside-code-draw was REALLY ugly.

So, I tried to make it just a little bit bigger. Not too much.

Yeah! This looks way better. My work is done! Now I can pin it to my taskbar without burning my eyes.

You can join the beta club (for free) and experiment what is coming before everybody else, and yet be part of the development of one great product. To join the beta club just complete the form on the Formula Beta Page (or just get in touch with me). Don’t forget to join the Skype group! New bits are being delivered almost everyday with incredible news.

Note: a Portuguese version of this post is coming.