Self Replicating Robots? (Whoever is doing this, please stop designing Android app icons)

To clarify on a tweet I did the other day…

Please stop putting the “Android” in your application icons. I know you really like the OS and all, but seriously there is nothing gained by having that little guy all over the place. How about you do a real icon in case you might, you know, create your app for a different platform.

Maybe I’m just crazy but when I’m cruising the App Market looking for something new, I tend to glance over the ones with crappy icons – because it’s the first indicator of the quality/effort put into your app. So if you want to get a leg up, maybe you should ask a designer to tackle it for you. There are people that do this kind of thing for a living and might enjoy getting their work out there. Wild guess.

So to hammer in these points a little more. Here’s a sampling of some of the icons in the Android Market with our little droid friend that I gathered up in about 20 minutes. This is not an indicator of what the Market looks like for those of you on other OSs, but I could have found hundreds more if I’d felt like giving it so more effort.

Do you really want to add your brand-new app that you worked many long hours on (assuming) and let it meld into the stream almost unrecognizable? Or would you rather it be unique and, at first glance, show that you might have made something cool?

It’s really marketing 101. Get people to look at it, maybe read the description and install the damn thing.