New Odysseus Icon!

Surprisingly the main challenge I faced in developing Odysseus was not in getting it to render webpages¹. GNOME and Apple have largely handled that for me. No, the main challenge was in designing an icon for it.

Today (or rather yesterday night) I think I finally have an icon which shows promise! Specifically promise of being a cool browser icon and promise of fitting in with elementary’s icon set. This icon shares the circular shape of all my competitors which also satisfies elementary’s requirement for a simple shape. I used this circular shape to give the impression of a globe (through colour) or compass (through the addition of a compass needle), both concepts which have become associated with the Web. But at the same time I made this icon distinctive with the prominant addition of a bold stylistic eye based off those on (illustrations of) ancient greek warships. I like the eye symbolically not just because it references the origin of my browser’s name, but also because it indicates I’m showing your eyes great knowledge and entertainment for them to obsorb.

I must thank my sister Aurora Cochrane for helping me design this icon. I hope you like it, however I am open to an artist polishing it off so it fits in even better with elementary OS.

That said this is far from my first design and I've tried several others. Some of these older ideas might have even been kind of cool, but they tended to be a bit overcomplicated for the style I'm trying to blend in with.

Thanks to FreeWebElements for providing the globe for the first icon.

1. Not to say that it’s trivial to implement the scope of UI they (or you) expect of me, or to polish said UI.