Nice title, eh? I kid you not, it took me a day and a half to think of an appropriate title for this 3d icon set. The problem is that these are not actually 3d icons. They say “3d” but they are definitely flat 2d graphics. So should I say that they are “flat icons that say 3d”? It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue very smoothly and I can’t think of a way to say it that isn’t really awkward and slightly misleading. All I can think about is someone searching for “3d icons” in Google, finding this page, not seeing anything remotely close to what they are looking for, leaving my site in a fit of rage and never coming back ever again. Yes folks, these are the kinds of problems us web developers face every single day. The struggle is real.
I’m a 3d guy to the core (I started my career doing nothing but 3d renderings), and I’ve done my fair share of real 3d icons over the years. I’ve even posted a few left over sets here on trashedgraphics.com – so if that’s what you’re looking for I’ve got you covered.
Anyway, I was recently tasked with creating an icon for 3d feature of a mobile app. Sorry I can’t go into more details about what that is (because of a non-disclosure agreement), but it is pretty neat and I’ve got a feeling that we are going to be seeing more of that kind of thing in the future. But an app icon was needed and I got to work generating a ton of rough concepts to show the client.
I’ve talked a lot in the past about how difficult icon design can be (the number of iterations can be brutal), but it’s not always that bad. For this one I was able to produce a concept during the very first round that made the client happy, and no further revisions were necessary. I don’t get that lucky very often but it feels great to nail it on the first try!
That left me with these two designs that didn’t make the cut, so naturally, I’m here to post them for all to use. Probably the most interesting things about these is that they almost look very “logo” like – the outlines around the “3D” text gives them a nice bit of extra detail which is normally needed for logos and not simple / flat icons.
Hope you enjoy these not really 3d but sort of 3d 2d vector icons!
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