Carl Öst Wilkens´ Blog

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Designing an icon for my Braintoss replacement

I'm building a replacement for an app I use daily: Braintoss. It's a very simple app, which just let's you input some text to quickly send to your inbox. It's great for people like myself, who live out of their mailbox.

Braintoss screenshot

However, I get frustrated with it sometimes. If you accidentally swipe to the side, you enter Voice mode, and your text disappears. Typing on my phone is frustrating enough as it is. When I quickly type down my thoughts, robustness is my absolute top priority. Other than that, the app just doesn't look very good. The color scheme is strange to say the least, and the icon is a fidget spinner. (What?)

The simplicity of the concept prompted me to finally make a replacement. And what better way to start, than by making the icon?

Ideating

Relevant concepts:

Design step 1

Pretty quickly I got the idea of overlaying a lightning bolt on top of an envelope. You can see my idea to the right. Still ways to go before it's viable.

Design ideas 1

These were the first ideas. I asked for some feedback, and to my delight, the lightning bolt idea was most liked.

Iteration 1

Testing some variations.

Iteration 2

Tuning the curves, to make the shapes more pleasant.

Color testing

At this point I'm experiencing decision fatigue. Offloading some decisions to my wife and some friends.

Color tuning

Tuning the colors to my liking. I really thought the rightmost sample was going to be final, and even tweeted about it. I called it a day.

Stroke of genius

The day after, I was looking through my installed app for some inspirations. Which do I like the most? Arc Browser stuck out to me, because of the stroke.

Arc Browser icon

Could I use this on my icon? I tried it, and was super happy with the result. With the outline, I get a solid shape which looks great in any shade or color. I also went with a nice yellow which reminds me of post-it notes.

Stroke testing

Pretty awesome, if I may say so myself!

Final icon

The app is on the way to the app store now, if you're looking for a sleek alternative to Braintoss. Search for Inboxd.

Inboxd screenshot

The taste is like the butt, as we say in sweden. Split in two. Doesn't work too well in english. Anyway, I personally prefer this a lot.

Written 2025-04-16