Another day, another incremental build forward for Trillian Astra. As the new build 77 features a new Chat Room Browser UI design, I designed a few new icons to accompany it.

The main problem of a “Chat Room” icon is that there is hardly ever a general icon designed for it. A search on Google Images for idea reveals nothing particularly interesting:

Most designs retreats to the method used by Chinese characters as concepts get more and more complicated, i.e. 3 chat bubbles imply that it is not 1-to-1 conversation, thus a chat room or a conference:

This design would work, but, until the concept of “Chat Room Groups” come up in the Yahoo! Chat Browser. And very soon we would find ourselves drowning in the vortex of the most complicated Chinese character if we put forward such logic:

The solution is to replace the icon with a new concept. In this case, I drew a little House with a chat bubble blowing through its chimney to represent a Chat Room. As users learn that a house represents a Chat Room, they will also understand that a few houses represents a group of Chat Rooms. (Let’s see how many other chat clients and chat sites would rip this idea off.)

I know, this is pretty minute, but it saves you from a bubble bath in the Chat Room Browser.