HorizonOS: 1P App Icons
Redesigned HorizonOS 1P app icons into a premium visual standard
Year:
2025
Category:
Design Systems
UI/UX
CGI
Tools:
Houdini / C4D
Redshift
Adobe CC
Figma
Brief
Working alongside the HzOS Art team and Reality Labs Design System, the goal was to completely redesign HorizonOS’s first-party app icons. We needed to elevate the visual language to feel more modern, dynamic, and premium, ensuring the designs held up at larger scales and adapted seamlessly across different device tiers and use cases. The ultimate objective was to establish a new visual standard for the OS, resulting in the approved "inverted gel" system.
Process
Technical Pipeline: We built an efficient cross-platform production pipeline. This started in Figma where we rendered black-and-white versions of the glyphs, which were then brought into Houdini. There, we ran them through a soft-form modeling pipeline to give them a pillow-like inflation without altering the silhouette. That geometry was exported to C4D for 3D lookdev and rendering, and finally brought back into Figma to composite the renders onto background tiles.
To scale this system across the organization, I "tokenized" the icons and componentized all assets into reusable Figma master components. This eliminated duplication, ensured strict consistency, and enabled fast asset swapping as we began interfacing with over 20 different product teams to update their specific icons. Throughout production, I acted as a conduit between artists, translating high-level direction and feedback into actionable, nuanced tasks to keep the team efficient and aligned.
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