Mascot app icons: why faces work and how to design one

Look at a home screen and the icons you find first are often the ones with faces. People are quick to spot eyes, even two dots on a blob. That is the case for a mascot icon: it is memorable at the sizes where most icons disappear.

Anatomy of a mascot that reads

• A simple body. A blob, a rounded square, an animal head. The silhouette should work in solid black.
• Big eyes, well apart. They carry the expression and survive at 29 pixels.
• One distinctive feature. Ears, a leaf, a flame, a hat. One, not four.
• Cheeks or a mouth, optional. Small marks that add warmth at large sizes and are allowed to vanish at small ones.
• A background that contrasts. A pale character on a saturated ground, or the reverse.

Say what the app does

The best mascots hint at the product: a note-taking app's character is a page with a face, a coffee app's is a cup, a timer's is a tomato. A random cute animal is memorable but does not say anything.

Style it

Mascots work in more than one style: flat with bold colours, glossy with soft 3D lighting, sticker with a thick outline, or pixel for a retro feel. App icon styles compares them.

Traps

• Tiny eyes that turn into one dark smudge.
• A full-body character, where the face ends up a few pixels tall.
• Copying a well-known character's proportions. Take the idea of a face, not someone else's.
• Expressions that read as sad or angry by accident. Check it small, where a slight tilt of the eyes can change the mood.

Finally, test it among real icons at 60 and 29 pixels, as in app icons at small sizes.

App Icon Foundry makes mascots from a brief, with motifs like characters with ears, eyes and cheeks, pages, cups and flames. Ask for other ears, other eyes or another colour in plain words and only that part changes.