This section presents an icon design process used at Apple. Of course, there are many ways to complete a task, and you may work in a way that doesn't lend itself to using this process. However, you should read this section to find out important principles that contribute to successful and effective icons. You can't design one icon in your icon family in isolation. Be flexible in adapting your design to all bit depths and sizes.
Icon design is an iterative process.
During the design process, you may need to redesign one version of an icon when you find it doesn't translate well to another version. If an icon represents hardware that users are familiar with, such as a printer or a disk drive, the icon should resemble the hardware as closely as possible. If the icon represents a desktop entity, such as a document or a folder, it should resemble its physical world counterpart. If you need to design an icon for a more conceptual entity, such as a network or some kind of memory, you can use one of the following approaches. Making the icon representative of the function of the software is a good approach.