Houdini vector icons

 

Houdini has a node-based architecture, and every node has a unique SVG (scalable vector) icon depicting (often metaphorically) its function.

I have made over 1000 icons for Houdini, using Inkscape and Sketch. I also supervise contract illustrators from time to time.

The icons below are a small selection of the icons I’ve made for Houdini.

A long time ago I worked at a company called Hummingbird, which made Windows apps for communicating with UNIX boxes (for example, a Windows X server implementation). I was a technical writer, but they had terrible icons so I redrew them. You can tell how long ago this was by the icon depicting a pager.

Hummingbird Windows icons

 

A long time ago I worked at a company called Hummingbird, which made Windows apps for communicating with UNIX boxes (for example, a Windows X server implementation). I was working there as a technical writer, but they had terrible icons so I had to redraw them.

You can tell this was a long time ago by the icon depicting a pager.

By the 90s the Amiga computer was largely forgotten, but I still had one, and made a custom icon set for the OS that became very popular (I used the Amiga’s alternate selection icon feature to make the icons “glow” when selected). The company that made the Amiga contracted me to turn the icon set into a full icon set for the next version of the Amiga OS.

AmigaOS icons

 

By the 90s the Amiga computer was largely forgotten, but I still had one, and made a custom icon set for the OS that became very popular (I used the Amiga’s alternate selection icon feature to make the icons “glow” when selected). The company that made the Amiga contracted me to turn the icon set into a full icon set for the next version of the Amiga OS.

These icons are so primitive as to be completely irrelevant to the modern day (they have a fixed 32-color palette and I hand-dithered every one to try to make them appear sharper).

But this was the first time I ever got paid to do design work, and I still think a few of these are kind of clever.