PXL-Makr: a small tool for our icons

Every App Artisans app needs icons, and we want them to look like they came from the same hand. So we made a tool for it.

PXL-Makr is a pixel-art icon maker we built for ourselves. You draw on a grid and export a clean icon with a transparent background, ready to drop into an app.

It's also a step back toward where we started. Pixel icons are closer to the art direction we first had in mind for the studio, and PXL-Makr is how we'll get there, one icon at a time.

Designed in a notebook

Most of PXL-Makr was designed on paper first. Sketches of the top bar, the export panel and the buttons were photographed and turned into the screen you see now.

Fewer tools, not more

There's no pen or eraser to switch between. Point at an empty square and you're drawing. Point at a filled one and you're erasing. Clearing the canvas pops every pixel like bubble wrap. Along the way we took out things we'd asked for, like round pixels, because they made icons look blurry. Each removal made it better.

Its own first icon

The PXL-Makr logo was drawn in PXL-Makr.

And one for the occasion: for Hafiz's birthday, he drew a cake in it.

For now it's an internal tool, and it's what we use to make icons for our apps.