iOS App Development Portable Genius

Sourcing Custom Graphics

It certainly helps if you have solid design skills, but there are many ways to source custom graphics:

Use clip art or other web sources. Common design elements such as glassy buttons are freely available online, as are free icon collections.

Create art manually. If you have access to image-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, you can use its features to create custom button graphics, icons, and other art.

Pay a graphic designer. This is an expensive choice!

Let’s look at each option in detail.

Finding clip art and icons

The web offers an almost endless supply of wallpapers, icons, and button designs. Many are free, although you should always check the copyright status of wallpapers before using them in an app.

To find icon files that you can embed in toolbar buttons, search the web for “free icons.” Figure 10.3 shows one of many possible hits—a set of free icons called gcons. Other possible sources include iconspedia, freeiconsweb, findicons—all with the usual .com web address—and many, many others. Free icon sets may not be specifically designed for iOS, but you’ll be able to use them anyway.

Creating art manually

If you have image-editing experience ...