We’ve all heard the age-old logic before: Don’t judge a book by its cover. While that’s all well and good, we kind of hope you do this time around. After all, the past year has been devoted to crafting best aesthetics possible for our new addition: UG Plus. So go ahead. Be superficial.
When we originally opted to provide the most in-depth, musician-driven services that we’ve ever, we wanted to design icons that properly captured the unique characteristics of each service. So we began the painstaking process of creating icons that best represented the latest features, and it’s amazing how the smallest tweaks in design and/or color can make such a massive difference in the eye of the beholder.
There are three key icons that represent the tools that you’ll find popping up throughout the
UG Plus section of the site: "
Backing Tracks," "
Tab Pro," and "
Ad Free." While there is an assortment of features on
UG Plus, these are the three guiding forces that you’ll become most acquainted with when perusing the site for your favorite Led Zeppelin or Avenged Sevenfold songs. Below you’ll find the inside scoop on the evolution of the icons (subtle though the changes they may be), which may possibly go through even a few more transformations before the official launch of
UG Plus.
Tab Pro:
The purple hue always seemed a right fit for the Tab Pro icon: eye-catching, yet not too flashy. Unfortunately the shape of the guitar was getting lost in all that lavender goodness.
We discovered that there is apparently such a thing as too much purple.
So rather than rely on the guitar’s shape to take form by a black outline alone, we decided to give the instrument a bit more power with a grey/silver color. The electric beauty packed a bit more 3-D punch without being too over the top.
Backing Tracks:
Our consistently favorite instrument, of course, was already being used for the Tab Pro section. Enter the obvious: the internationally understood musical note. We experimented with a pair of silvery eighth notes, but in the end opted to pare it down to just a darkly shaded single.
With the same logic we used for the Tab Pro, the shadowed, black silhouette of the eighth note against the blue background just didn’t seem to pop out enough.
That second figure was then eventually swapped with the white color of the current Backing Tracks Icon.
Ad Free:
One might ask why there was such an emphasis placed on an icon that is merely discussing the lack of advertisements. Well, if you’ve encountered pop-ups that tack on five more minutes to reading an article simply because you can’t figure out where the freaking "X" or "Close" box is located, then the words "Ad Free" are pretty much a godsend.
We tried out the "anti" symbol to signify the lack of banners and pop-ups.
As well as the black, boldly lined "Ad Free" message against the bug-green background.
n the end we went with consistency, and the same white/gray font color was selected for the classic and robust "Ad Free" signage.
The icons are basic in nature, but that’s the beauty of it all. UG Plus is meant to be the most accessible tablature/backing tracks service out in the market today, and the icons will be a perfect navigational guide. The alterations might seem small, but we at Ultimate-Guitar want our latest services to be not only educational but easy on the eyes.
Our artistic endeavor won’t be complete until we do a few more final tweaks, but in the meantime we’d love to have you also get involved in the creative process. You’re encouraged to submit your own works of genius to our forum thread, using any style that you see fit: classic, modern, or downright otherworldly. Every submission will be reviewed thoroughly and in the end will help us take another huge leap closer to what we’ve all been waiting for: the launch of UG Plus. So pull up your favorite editing software and make some visual magic that would make Picasso cry tears of joy.
