New app icon, and bump to 1.4 - #23
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The icon shipping today is a stock flat-illustration euro coin on a blue gradient. It names one currency for an app that converts around 170, its four stacked layers — rim, inner disc, shading crescent, highlight stripe — collapse into a smudge at the 16pt and 32pt sizes macOS asks for, and being a widely licensed clip-art asset it says nothing about this product. Seven directions, as self-contained SVGs on Apple's 1024pt grid: an S drawn as a two-way exchange arrow, a two-currency split tile, two coins, a rebuilt coin, an exchange ring, and the S mark in glass and light finishes. Currency glyphs are outlines rather than text, so the files carry no font dependency and open the same way in Pixelmator, Figma or Illustrator. Nothing in the asset catalog changes yet — apply_icon.mjs installs a chosen concept when there is one. It also fixes two things beyond swapping artwork: the macOS slots currently hold bare full-bleed squares and get rebuilt as the 824pt rounded tile the Dock expects, and LaunchColor gets repointed at the chosen icon's own background instead of staying on an indigo picked for the old coin. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NqoQ882LK6CfUkwsXG6xXp
The first glass lens bent a constant-width stroke into an S-ish path and hung two triangles off it. A drawn S has modulated weight — it swells through the curves and narrows at the joints — and that modulation is what makes the eye file a shape as a letter at all. Without it the mark read as a bent pipe wearing triangles: not a convincing letter, not a convincing symbol. Six replacements over the same colour field, so the lens shape is the only variable. Three keep the letter — the drawn S, the same S with its terminals carried on into arrow points, and the drawn dollar glyph. Three drop it — the two-arrow swap pair, a closed exchange loop, and the euro sign. The rim is now built by dilation rather than inset: each sub-path is drawn once expanded in the rim colour, then the undilated mark is masked over it. Dilating the parts equals dilating their union, so composite marks get an even rim with no internal seams. An inset would need a real polygon-offset pass, and feMorphology cannot do it at all — its structuring element is square, so it erodes a circle into a diamond. 01-swap and 07-light still carry the old geometry and should be repointed at whichever shape wins. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NqoQ882LK6CfUkwsXG6xXp
$ is an S struck by a bar; € is a bowl struck by a double bar. Give the S the euro's double bar and one glyph carries both — and the double bar is an equals sign, which is what a converter asserts. It names no single currency, which is the problem the redesign started on, while still reading as the brand's initial. Where the bars go was decided by measurement, not taste. At mid-height Inter's S is a solid diagonal band ~380 units wide, so a centred bar vanishes into it and re-emerges at a different x on each side; the pair then reads as a staircase. Cutting a clearance through the letter instead keeps the bars continuous, but the S's stroke runs almost horizontally there, so the clearance takes the middle of the letter and what survives reads as an O. The left edge, though, is vertical from y=340 to y=445 and moves only 274..291 across the wider y=305..480 — bars crossing there come out the same length on both stubs, which is what makes an equals sign read as one, and is how the euro does it too. Each bar stops inside the letter's solid stroke, since running further puts a floating segment in the counter. That cut-off is measured off a rasterised silhouette so it survives a change of weight or cap. Also fixes a compositing bug in the glass treatment: the rim layer painted each sub-path with a semi-transparent gradient, so overlapping sub-paths doubled up and printed a visible slab across composite marks. The rim is opaque now and the transparency sits on the group, applied once after compositing. Ships in all three treatments. Glass carries a wider bar gap than the flat ones because its rim dilates every edge by 13 units; both leave the same visible slot. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NqoQ882LK6CfUkwsXG6xXp
…at it The first cut ran the rules in from the left and ended them inside the stroke, the way the euro does. The euro can: its bowl is a C, so a bar crosses one narrow vertical stroke and then runs free across the opening. An S has no opening there, so what showed was two tabs beside a letter — tidy, and asserting nothing. The rules now cross the waist and come out the far side. The S is a diagonal band up to 404 units wide at mid-height, so it buries each rule and releases it at a different x on each side; aligning the rules at their ends is what stops that reading as a stagger and starts it reading as the letter sitting in front of them. The letter also drops one weight — Inter's Black S has open bands only at y 335..395 and y 620..680, where Bold's are 90 units tall rather than 60, giving a rule more aperture to show through. Cutting a clearance through the letter was tried too and is worse than either: the S's stroke runs almost horizontally through that band, so the clearance takes the middle of the letter and what survives reads as an O. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NqoQ882LK6CfUkwsXG6xXp
Replaces the stock flat-illustration euro coin. That icon named one currency for an app that converts around 170, and its four stacked layers — rim, inner disc, shading crescent, highlight stripe — collapsed into an orange smudge at the 16pt and 32pt sizes macOS asks for in the Dock, Finder sidebar and Cmd-Tab. Split still names two currencies rather than none, but it is the strongest small-size performer of everything drawn: once the glyphs have dissolved, two colour fields meeting on a curve are still a distinct shape. Generated from concepts/02-split.svg by apply_icon.mjs, which also fixes two things beyond the artwork. The macOS slots held bare full-bleed squares and are now the Big Sur tile — an 824pt rounded square centred in the 1024pt canvas with a drop shadow — so the app stops reading as a pasted screenshot in the Dock. And LaunchColor moves off the indigo picked for the old coin to the deep teal of the new icon's lower field, so the splash no longer disagrees with the icon it precedes. The S-monogram family explored alongside this is removed; it stays in this branch's history if it is ever worth revisiting. Not verified against a real Xcode build — no macOS toolchain in this environment. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NqoQ882LK6CfUkwsXG6xXp
Written two-component to match how 1.2 and 1.3 were set; the three-component form has been used for patch releases only. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NqoQ882LK6CfUkwsXG6xXp
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Replaces the stock euro coin with a new icon, and bumps
MARKETING_VERSIONto 1.4.Why
The icon shipping until now was a stock flat-illustration euro coin on a blue gradient. Three problems:
What ships
Split — one tile divided on a curve, a currency in each field. It still names two currencies rather than none, but it's the strongest small-size performer of everything drawn: once the glyphs have dissolved, two colour fields meeting on a curve are still a distinct shape.
Two fixes come along with the artwork:
LaunchColormoves off the indigo picked for the old coin to#0E4A50, the deep teal of the new icon's lower field, so the splash stops disagreeing with the icon it precedes.How it's built
Media/Icons/concepts/02-split.svgis the source of truth; everything in the asset catalog is generated from it:The SVGs carry no font dependency — currency glyphs are outlines rather than text, so they open and edit identically in Pixelmator, Figma or Illustrator. Three other directions (
03-duo,04-coin,05-ring) stay on file as genuinely different answers rather than variations. A larger family built on an S monogram was explored and dropped; it's in this branch's history.Not verified
The asset catalog hasn't been through a real Xcode build — no macOS toolchain in the environment this was authored in. It's correct by inspection: every declared slot has a PNG at the right pixel dimensions and
Contents.jsonkeeps the shape it had. Worth an asset-catalog build before tagging.Version
MARKETING_VERSION1.3.3 → 1.4, on the app target's Debug and Release configs only. Written two-component to match how 1.2 and 1.3 were set; three components have been used for patches.CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSIONleft at 0.🤖 Generated with Claude Code
https://claude.ai/code/session_01NqoQ882LK6CfUkwsXG6xXp
Generated by Claude Code