What makes for good icon design?

A summary from Turbomilk on what does and doesn't work in icon design. Unsurprisingly, many of the general usability guidelines apply.

But Turbomilk suggests taking the following considerations into account:

Simplicity
Recognizability
Style consistency
Ease of differentiation
Cultural localization

Not forgetting, of course, the importance of working on a small scale; resizing a large, (even vectorial) image is gonna look too messy and fussy at 16 x 16 pixels!

Fairly logical stuff, but an interesting read nonetheless.

http://turbomilk.com/truestories/cookbook/criticism/10-mistakes-in-icon-design/