Icon design is one of the most important skills a designer can have, because the principles used in icon design overlap so significantly with other fields such as user interface design, web design and logo design. Designing a good icon can be a lot more challenging than it seems, because the small size makes it hard to integrate the desired detail, but a certain amount of detail must be present in order for the icon to be convincing.
The best way to learn icon design is to practice and follow tutorials. In the year 2012, there’s already been a lot of great new icon creation tutorials that you can follow, and they all show off some cutting edge techniques.
Here’s the best new icon creation tutorials so far in 2012.