Visual metaphor for "categories" icon

P

phide

Fully [H]
Joined
Jun 11, 2004
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I'm struggling a bit on this one. I've been trying to come up with a good metaphor for a "categories" icon that is effective at about 20x20 pixels. I had considered using the 'standard' sitemap icon (an example of which is here), but given that this is for a web project, I'd prefer to avoid causing any confusion for users who might be familiar with that icon and its significance. A filing cabinet metaphor would work, but distilling that down into a 20x20 pixel, single-color icon just isn't feasible.

Any thoughts?
 
To be honest, it doesn't really matter what you pick. As long as you familiarise the users with that aspect of the GUI theyll think whatever you tell them to think...and like it :D.

e.g. the RSS feed button.

So just try and make it something unique/memorable/simple.
For example, if you do an image search for the word "categories" you get this.
Now most of these are a simple kind of grid thing. Which might work as simple geometric kind of things are easy to remember. (as you probably know most brands and sysmbols work around simple yet unique designs. Playstation □△○×　kind of thing. With a grid be careful it doesn't look like the windows key however. Like make the things round, or some such thing.) Also like with tattoos, simple works better, you get too complicated and it makes it a mess. People are retarted, so you need them to be able to recognise it in less than instantly. Or just use the symbol of your thing (like with the start menu). Just needs to be simple enough to recognise and just complicated enought to be unique.
 
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I pretty much took both ideas into consideration and came up with this:

categoriesicon.png


Not the most elegant thing in the world, but I think it conveys the right idea (distinct objects = distinct categories), and it looks good at 20x20. Should do nicely. Thanks for the responses.
 
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