I designed the logo and icons for a new Mac OS X utility called SleepMute.

I was contacted by Dave Murdock of Tangerine Element to design the logo for a new OS X utility he was developing. SleepMute automatically mutes and unmutes sound when your display or computer sleeps and wakes up.
Dave’s initial idea was for the logo to portray a sleeping speaker. I created a bunch of different sketches to illustrate variations of this concept then I started expanding on the idea of a sleeping computer.

We narrowed down the choice to three possible sketches:

We picked n.2 because it’s simple, clear and it follows Apple’s recommendation that icons for utilities be two-dimensional and front-facing.
A few iterations were necessary to choose the right colors and size. You should always test your OS X icons in the dock to see if they blend well with their neighbors.
Also invaluable was this tip by Panic for creating ICNS files under Snow Leopard.

SleepMute is now available on the App Store.