DT Admin: Icon Do It All By Myself

Words and images by Kaibeezy: "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." That's the famous 1988 quote by Steve Jobs, which he claimed to have stolen from Picasso, who apparently never said it, or if he did, stole it from William Faulkner, who stole it from Igor Stravinsky, who stole it from T.S. Eliot. Of course, in 1988, the Internet was a sprinkling of government and institutional nodes only beginning to transition from UUCP to TCP/IP, and so basically no stealable art.

Today, mashups *are* art, and the resources are endless. One of the best I've ever found for "useful" art is something called The Noun Project, which describes itself as a repository of "the world's visual language". For a dilettante designer such as myself, it's like a free pass at the pick-n-pull. Or looting. Anyhoo, there's a virtual ton of icons, some better than others, many completely excellent, and, crucially, all provided in SVG format, which means I can open the vector art in Illustrator and kustomize it. Also, they are all either public domain, which means totally free, or CreativeCommons Attribution CC BY which means totally free as long as you give credit, which we have done below.

A couple of details one or two people might find interesting... The country identifying badges feature official racing stripe colors as listed in Wikipedia, for example: Italian red is "rosso corsa", RGB 204-0-0; "British racing green" is 1-66-37, which is way darker than I had expected; "Bleu de France" is 49-140-231. 

 

Some of the icons have been used exactly as-found, some cruelly disfigured (train engine, el camino, COW, popemobile,), some fabricated mostly from scratch (thorsday, M5).

Click for an article about artist Luis Prado, whose icons are especially apropos.

The result has been these new DT badges you've been seeing. Even though we made them all on purpose, there are a bunch we're still scratching our itchy heads over... what do they mean? And more are on the assembly line.

So here's an idea. In the comments on this thread, or via the tips email, give us your ideas, in writing or graphic (or, if you know what you're doing, 100x100 24-bit non-interlaced non-transparent RGB PNG). We'll judge them salaciously like flatbrims at a mud wrestling festival, maybe make minor or major adjustments, and maybe you'll see it posted one day. We'll do it like an Easter egg hunt -- if you see an icon you begat, own up to it in the comments for that posting. Fun, right?

Deep thanks and sincere apologies to these talented The Noun Project artists. 

Sickle by Edward Boatman

Top Hat by Luke Anthony Firth

Wrench by John Caserta

Hot Rod by Andrew Cameron

Speedometer by Prerak Patel

Hamster Wheel by Olivier Guin,

Snail by aLf

Car by Björn Andersson

Marriage Proposal by Luis Prado

Coins by Timur Zima

Train by Vito Vetrov

Fish by Jens Tärning

Hand by jake sones

Head Bang by Luis Prado

Conjoined Twins by Gilad Fried

Pretzel by Killian McIlroy

Money by Atelier Iceberg

Popemobile by Luis Prado

Gas by Jon Testa

Drunk by Matt Brooks

Ejection Seat by Luis Prado

Jet Pack by Luis Prado

Fire by Diego Naive

Mustache by Juan Pablo Bravo

Knight by Juan Pablo Bravo

Car by MaxineVSG

Flying Car by Luis Prado

Rooster by m. turan ercan

Jackalope by Lance Weisser

Parade Queen by Luis Prado

Economy Class by Luis Prado

Fleur de Lis by José Manuel

Teapot by Daniel Turner

Buggy by Richard Zeid

Viking by Juan Pablo Bravo

Colosseum by Adriano Gazzellini

Police by Luis Prado

Unicorn by caba kosmotesto

Child Safety Seat by Sylvain Amatoury

Snowman by Luis Prado 

Pinata by Yazmin Alanis 

Truck by Luis Prado 
Submarine by Edward Boatman 
Armadillo by Amanda Sebastiani 
Carnival Mask by Federica Gatta 
Emperor by Simon Child
Coffee by Jacob Halton 
Cockroach by Michael Thompson 
Siren by Yamini Chandra 
"Poutine" by Jonathunder - Own work. Licensed under GFDL 1.2 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poutine.JPG#/media/File:Poutine.JPG