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I would say, having your avatars being SVGs is a big step of an improvement, and it would make designing a high-quality icon much easier, since the website now supports it! 😉
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User icon updates
Published by Vlasta on May 31st.
User icons were a controversial topic since they were first introduced on rw-designer. Uploaded icons need approval before they are visible to other users. There are rather strict rules on what is acceptable. Majority of uploaded icon break the rules and are not accepted. Even some of the accepted icons are borderline cases and may actually be disapproved in the near future.
First, the changes
User icons were PNG images with transparent background, 150x200 pixels in size. After the update, square SVGs are also supported and actually recommended. The new stock icons are all SVGs (vector images). This change, together with other changes to the page style, was made, because many people have high-resolution displays and use more than 100% zoom factor. This makes some images look blurry, but not SVGs.
If you are considering upgrading your old icon to SVG and you still have the original .rli file, you can easily just export it as an SVG image and upload it. Before you do that, flatten the file to a single vector layer and change the canvas to be square. Also extend your clothes to cover the extra space on the square canvas. Finally, position and resize your face to roughly match the position and size of the face on the stock icons.
You can download the stock icons i/unknown.svg, i/male.svg, i/female.svg or mine user-icon/1.svg to help you position and size your head on the canvas properly.
If you are using the Classic Light or Classic Dark style, your icon will still be clipped to a rectangle with 3:4 aspect ratio, but there may be more styles in the future and they may use square icons, and so, be prepared for them with your SVG icon.
Why are there still rules for icons?
It is obvious from the uploaded icons that most people do not read the rules or decide to just ignore them. Most people would probably like to have no rules at all and use whatever image they choose as their user icon, just like it is on most other web sites. So, why are there these strict rules?
- Icon is displayed in many places of the web and affect how the whole web is perceived by visitors. If any icon was acceptable, there would likely be many offensive ones. If any style of icon was acceptable, it would not be obvious to new users that they are looking at a user icon at all. And it is likely that the style of the icon would not fit with the style of the elements surrounding it.
- It is just nicer, if all the user icons have similar look and feel. It makes the People page as well as the comment sections elsewhere easier on the eyes.
- Having a custom icon is prestigious thing, is indicates that you are not a newbie when it comes to graphic design and you are able to create and manipulate a vector images.
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