Examples of Beautifully Designed App Icons

Here’s a quick exercise for you – if you have a smartphone, check out what’s on your home screen. Now check out what apps you’ve got on the second page. If you’re anything like me, it’s more likely that the apps you’ve got on the home screen are the ones that look nicer. Whether it’s the new Google Maps icon, or the simple and minimalist Dropbox icon – when an app icon is nicely designed, it just feels like it belongs on the phone.

More and more mobile app designers are discovering that the design of the icon plays a surprisingly big role in how often an app is used, and how often it’s downloaded from the app store. Good apps should always have a great UI and look and feel, but the app icon is often seen more times throughout the day than the app UI itself.

It can be challenging designing an app icon that looks good. You don’t have much room to work with, but often constraints can lead to great design work and it can be much more rewarding when you get it right. To help give you some ideas for your next app design project, we’ve brought together some fantastic examples of beautifully designed app icons. If you’ve found any that should be included in our roundup, we’d love to hear about it in the comments.