How to Design Mini Icons

original source : webdesignerwall
Numbers of people have asked me how to design my popular Mini Pixel Icon pack>. In fact, they are relatively easy. All you need is just some basic Photoshop skills. Here I will show you how to use the Pencil tool to design pixel icons, and then re-use them to create a full collection.
This is the technique that I used to create over 320 icons within a day.
1. Create a new document
In Photoshop, create a new document 14 x 14px size with transparent background.

2. Draw shape outline
Use the Pencil tool, select 1px brush from the palette. Pick a dark gray color and start drawing the outline of the page icon. To draw a straight line, first click at the starting point, then hold down shift key and click at the ending point.

Tips: At any time if you want to erase the pixels, use the Eraser tool, select Pencil mode and 1px brush size.

3. Base gradient
Make a selection of the empty cutout by the Magic Wand tool. Create a new layer. Set your foreground color to light gray and background to white. Use Gradient tool, drag from top corner to lower corner diagonally.

4. Highlight and shadow
Create a new layer. Draw a 1px white inner top border to create the highlight effect. Then, draw a medium gray inner bottom border.

5. Group all layers
In the Layers palette, select all layers and press Cmd+G to group all layers in a folder.

6. Draw a pencil

Again, start drawing the outline first and then fill the inner area with either solid color or gradient. When you are done, group these layers in a separate folder.

Tips: If you want to have consistent color throughout the icon set, store the colors that you have used in the color swatches.
7. Re-use them
Here shows how I re-used the layer groups to create entire collection:

8. Export for web
After you’ve done entire set, toggle (invisible / visible) the layer groups and save them for web (Cmd+Alt+Shift+S).

Too lazy to do this tutorial? You can download from ndesign-studio at free mini icon set.