Your Icon Gets 50 Milliseconds. Make Them Count.

NNGroup research shows users form opinions in under 50ms. In a crowded app store or a packed home screen, your icon is the only marketing you get.

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App Icon Design

Distinctive app icons that stand out in app store listings and on home screens while clearly communicating your brand at every resolution.

What's Included

Everything you get with our App Icon Design

Competitive Icon Analysis

Visual audit of the top 50 apps in your category to identify dominant color patterns, shape trends, and opportunities for visual differentiation.

Multi-Size Icon System

Icon designs tested at every required size -- from 16x16 notification badges through 180x180 home screen icons to 1024x1024 app store features -- ensuring clarity at each resolution.

Platform-Specific Variants

Separate icons following Apple's rounded-square guidelines and Android's adaptive icon specification, including foreground/background layer separation for dynamic shapes.

A/B Test Variants

Multiple icon concepts designed for store listing experiments, allowing you to test which visual approach drives the highest download conversion rate.

How We Design App Icons

Category and Competitor Research

We analyze the top 50 apps in your category's store listings, documenting dominant colors, shapes, and styles to identify visual gaps where your icon can stand out rather than blend in.

Concept Exploration

We develop 3-5 distinct icon concepts that balance brand identity with category differentiation. Each concept is evaluated at multiple sizes to ensure it communicates clearly from 16px to 1024px.

Small-Size Stress Testing

Icons are tested at the smallest sizes first -- notification badges, settings lists, app switcher thumbnails -- because designs that work at 16x16 always scale up well, but the reverse is not true.

Platform Specification

We produce final assets for both iOS (rounded-square with proper safe zones) and Android (adaptive icons with separate foreground and background layers for dynamic masking by device manufacturers).

A/B Test Setup and Measurement

We prepare test variants for Google Play Store experiments or third-party A/B testing tools on iOS, with clear metrics for measuring which icon drives the highest download conversion rate.

Key Benefits

Higher App Store Conversion

A distinctive, professionally designed icon increases the percentage of store listing viewers who actually tap 'download.' In competitive categories, this single asset can be the difference between a user choosing your app or a competitor's.

Easier to Find on Home Screens

Users with dozens of installed apps scan their home screens quickly. A bold, simple icon with strong visual contrast is findable in under a second. A detailed or muddy icon gets lost, reducing open frequency and daily active usage.

Brand Recognition Across Touchpoints

Your icon appears in notifications, app switchers, settings menus, share sheets, and search results. A well-designed icon maintains its identity across all these contexts, building brand recognition with every interaction.

Platform Approval and Editorial Consideration

Both Apple and Google evaluate visual polish during app review. Apps with high-quality icons pass review more smoothly and are more likely to receive editorial features and category highlights.

Research & Evidence

Backed by industry research and proven results

Fintech App Increased Downloads 34% With Icon Redesign

Fitness App's A/B Test Proved Icon Shape Affects Retention

Frequently Asked Questions

Should our app icon include text or our company name?

Almost never. Text becomes unreadable at small sizes (notification badges, app switcher), and your app name already appears below the icon on home screens and in store listings. The most effective icons use a single recognizable graphic that represents the app's function or brand mark. The rare exceptions are brands whose logo IS a letterform (like Airbnb's 'A' or Facebook's 'f').

How many icon concepts do you provide?

We develop 3-5 distinct concepts, each exploring a different visual approach. After reviewing concepts with your team, we refine the selected direction through 2-3 rounds of iteration. We also create A/B test variants of the final design so you can validate the choice with real download data.

Do you design icons for both iOS and Android?

Yes. iOS and Android have different icon specifications. iOS uses rounded squares with specific corner radius and safe zones. Android uses adaptive icons with separate foreground and background layers that device manufacturers can mask into circles, squircles, or rounded squares. We design for both specifications from the same visual concept.

How do you make sure the icon stands out in app store search results?

We start by researching what the top competitors in your category look like. If most finance apps use blue, we explore green or amber. If most fitness apps use a person silhouette, we explore geometric abstraction. Differentiation is deliberate -- we choose colors, shapes, and styles specifically to contrast with what users see in the same search results.

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Your Icon Is Your App's First and Most Frequent Impression

Let's design one that earns the tap every time.

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