Journey to App - Part 7 - Graphic Assets

Up until now, the focus of the development has been on the functionality.  For a simple app, like this PDF App, that is fine.  But now, it is time to complete the Graphic Assets and complete the app.  Depending on what type of app you are building, you may need to tackle the Graphics much earlier in the development process.

Tools
For the most part, most graphical assets for apps are deployed as PNG graphics, although you can use GIF and JPEG files as well.   But whereas PNG files are bit maps, it is much better to develop your graphic assets in a vector drawing program that will very easily allow you to scale, rotate and work with the images that you are creating.  Some common tools include Illustrator and Photoshop from Adobe, but I use an opensource package call Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org).  In addition to a good drawing program, you can always use a good place to start.  Google of course can help you out, and there are lots of free and paid sites that can provide icons and other images, just make sure you can use the image.  One great starting point with many open source (creative commons) images is Wiki Common at http://commons.wikimedia.org.

Required Assets
Even for a simple app, there are several required graphical assets that you must create.  As you may expect, Apple requires these in specific sizes.  For iOS 7, here is the common list of required assets.  (Please note, you can define different names in the info.plist file, but these are common.)

Description	File Name	Resolution
Large icon for iTunes	iTunesArtwork	1024 X 1024
iPad Retina icon	Icon-76@2x.png	152 X 152
iPad icon	Icon-76.png	76 X 76
iPhone Retina icon	Icon@2x.png	120 X 120
iPhone icon	Icon.png	60 X 60
iPhone 4 Splash Screen	Default@2X.png	640 X 960
iPhone 5 Splash Screen	Default-568H.png	640 X 1136
iPad Retina Splash Screen	Default-Landscape@2x.png	2048X 1536
	Default-Portrait@2x.png	1536 X 2048
iPhone 3 Splash Screen	Default.png	320 X 480

In addition to the require assets in the table above, I needed to create a few small icons.  The Chariti framework includes some default assets, but I wanted to customize some of the icons to make it easier for the user to choose the correct option.

Here are the assets that were developed for the App.
App Icon

Splash Screen (iPad)

Screenshot

Small Icons

Whats up next ...
With our assets complete, the app is ready to upload to Apple.  The next post will discuss the publishing process as well as monetizing your app.

Running Total Hours
Activities

• Create Graphic Assets - 3 hours
• Additional Testing - 1 hour

Total Hours to Date 32.5 hrs

Previous Part 6 - Coding 

Next Part 8 - Publishing