Application Image Design Guidelines
When you develop an application for iOS or Android, you need to prepare a number of graphical resources such as splash screen images and icons. Please refer below to the summary of guidelines for designing iOS and Android application artwork.
Guidelines for creating iOS application artwork
When developing for iOS, please take into account that there are a number of iOS devices with different screen resolutions: 320x480 pixels (original iPhone, iPhone 3G, 3GS), 640x960 pixels (iPhone 4G, iPod 4G), 1024x768 pixels (iPad). You will need to design artwork for each of the resolutions you plan to support in your application. Please refer to the following table for recommended iOS application icon and image dimensions. You can find more information on the Apple's web site.
|
Image or icon name
|
Size (in pixels)
|
|
Application icon (required)
|
iPhone, iPod touch:
57 x 57 114 x 114 (high resolution) iPad: 72 x 72 |
|
App Store icon (required)
|
512 x 512
|
|
Launch image (required)
|
iPhone, iPod touch:
320 x 480 640 x 960 (high resolution) iPad: 768 x 1004 for portrait 1024 x 748 for landscape |
|
Small icon for Spotlight search results and Settings
(recommended) |
iPhone, iPod touch:
29 x 29 58 x 58 (high resolution) iPad: 50 x 50 for Spotlight search results 29 x 29 for Settings |
|
Document icon
(recommended for custom document types) |
iPhone, iPod touch:
22 x 29 44 x 58 (high resolution) iPad: 64 x 64 320 x 320 |
|
Toolbar and navigation bar icon (optional)
|
iPhone, iPod touch:
Approximately 20 x 20 Approximately 40 x 40 (high resolution) iPad: Approximately 20 x 20 |
|
Tab bar icon (optional)
|
iPhone, iPod touch:
Approximately 30 x 30 Approximately 60 x 60 (high resolution) iPad: Approximately 30 x 30 |
Note: Toolbar, navigation bar, and tab bar icons are interpreted by iOS as two-color masks, so full-color icons are not needed in these cases.
Guidelines for creating Android application artwork
Android applications can run on a variety of devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. The most common screen sizes are 240x320, 240x400, 320x480, 480x800 pixels. For best user experience, splash screen image should be provided for all these sizes.
In order to simplify handling different screen resolutions, a notion of generalized screen density is used. The following table lists icon sizes for the three Android generalized screen densities:
| Icon Type |
|
||||||||
|
36 x 36 px
|
48 x 48 px
|
72 x 72 px
|
|||||||
|
36 x 36 px
|
48 x 48 px
|
72 x 72 px
|
|||||||
|
12w x 19h px (preferred, width may vary)
|
16w x 25h px (preferred, width may vary)
|
24w x 38h px (preferred, width may vary)
|
|||||||
|
19 x 19 px
|
25 x 25 px
|
38 x 38 px
|
|||||||
|
24 x 24 px
|
32 x 32 px
|
48 x 48 px
|
|||||||
|
24 x 24 px
|
32 x 32 px
|
48 x 48 px
|
|||||||
|
24 x 24 px
|
32 x 32 px
|
48 x 48 px
|
|||||||
The recommended image format for all images and icons for Android applications is PNG with bit depth of 24 bits (8 bits each for red, green, and blue).
We recommend starting image file names with special prefixes, for example,
|
Asset Type
|
Prefix
|
Example
|
|
Icons
|
ic_
|
ic_star.png
|
|
Launcher icons
|
ic_launcher
|
ic_launcher_calendar.png
|
|
Menu icons
|
ic_menu
|
ic_menu_archive.png
|
|
Status bar icons
|
ic_stat_notify
|
ic_stat_notify_msg.png
|
|
Tab icons
|
ic_tab
|
ic_tab_recent.png
|
|
Dialog icons
|
ic_dialog
|
ic_dialog_info.png
|
We recommend downloading Android Icons Template Pack 2.3. This is the simplest way to start designing your own icons. Icon templates are provided in the Adobe Photoshop format (.psd).
More information on designing icons is available from the Android website.
When you release your application to Android Market, you will have to provide screenshots and high resolution icon. You can also provide promotional and feature graphics. The requirements for these images are available at the Android website.
To accommodate for different screen dimensions, Android supports NinePatch graphics that can automatically resize to the requested boundaries. This can be useful, for example, for buttons that would adjust their background images according to the button caption. You can find more information about NinePatch graphics at the Android website.
