In this article I will show you a very easy way to create nice looking icon drawables you can use in your Android applications.

Using this method we can easily skip through the difficult and time-consuming parts of creating icons.

Yes, I know this method does not work for everyone, some Android developers have their own designer and so on, but for a small and simple app, this will definateley do!

Table of contents

The problem

Creating icons for Android apps may sound simple, but in fact, it is not as easy as it sounds…

There are a number of different icon categories, here are a couple of them:

  • Launcher icons – The applications main icon
  • Menu icons – The icons on the menu you get when pressing the menu button on your device
  • Tab icons – Icons on tabs
  • Status bar notification icons – Icons for your apps notifications

When creating icons for Android, you should create icons for different screen densities:

  • Low density – ldpi – 36×36 px
  • Medium density – mdpi – 48×48 px
  • High density – hdpi – 72×72 px

(You can read more about the different icon dimensions here. Note: The dimensions in bold above, are for menu icons)

The Problem: Creating all those different icon types in several densities, with the right gradient color, shadow, borders, selected/unselected state etc, can be a time-consuming and irritating process.

We would like to save us some time!

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