There’s room for a whole world inside an app icon. Even for a banana. We took inspiration from the games we love, giving ours new places to belong and small details to discover along the way. Each set has its own story, and sometimes the scenery moves.
An app icon sits in the top-left corner, minding its own business, yet somehow sets the tone for the whole workspace. We’ll keep adding to this little world as new ideas take shape. For now, take a look around and find a corner you’d like to bring into your everyday workspace.
The house banana, of course
A house logo has to be recognizable in the smallest corner of an app. This is the banana with that job, the one the rest of the collection gets to dress up. It is allowed a little vanity of its own, so the original comes with Deep cerulean and Dusk variations. A familiar face can still have a wardrobe.
A fruit with hidden colors
An opal can flash different colors as the angle of the light changes, an effect known as play-of-color. It is a good reason for a gem cutter to take their time deciding what to keep. Here the shape is a banana, which gives the stone an unexpected career. Crushed velvet completes the jewelry-counter treatment.
Ripe for the press
Newspapers made room for photographs by breaking their shades into a screen of dots. At a reading distance, the dots merge into smooth tones. This banana borrows that old bargain between ink and eyesight. The hot foil versions are for anyone who thinks fruit should make the front page.
A banana between scenes
In cel animation, a character can be painted on a clear sheet and placed over a separate background. It is a practical arrangement for a cartoon hero with places to be. This banana borrows that look for a scene of its own, with a lagoon among the backgrounds. The plot will have to catch up.
An unlikely cut of gemstone
A gem cutter shapes and polishes flat faces to control the way light travels through a stone. A banana is an unusual choice for all that geometry. Here, the cut ends in a familiar curve, with rose quartz and aquamarine among its possibilities. It would make an awkward engagement ring, but a persuasive icon.
Every pixel earns its place
A sprite has limited room to explain itself, so every pixel has to count. A few colored squares can be enough to suggest a fruit against a whole landscape. These bananas have a small world to inhabit, from rolling hills to a town skyline. You might remember the night skyline long after you forget the quest.
A little pattern in the peel
Marbled paper starts with color floating on a liquid bath, combed into patterns before a sheet lifts it away. Each sheet records the pattern at the moment the paper touches the bath. This set cuts that sort of decorative paper into a banana, with Matisse-style cut-outs among the other possibilities. It is a good excuse to stop saving the nice paper.
Consult the spellbook first
In an RPG, a little fire symbol can tell you what kind of trouble a spell will cause before you read its name. This set gives the banana the same treatment, with an element drawn around it like a promise. Fire is only the beginning of its ambitions. Even the lilac version has a poison option, which is a lot to learn about a piece of fruit.
The fruit of a long polish
Stone carving begins with rough cuts and ends with much smaller decisions. Marble can be smoothed with ever finer abrasives until the tool marks give way to a reflective surface. Here, all that patience is spent on the curve of a banana, with Calacatta Gold among the settings. After all that work, it is still a banana.
Found something worth keeping
A game can make a new item feel important before it tells you what the item does. Give it a slot of its own and a glint of light, and suddenly it belongs in the inventory. The banana has been given the full item treatment, right down to the choice of slot color. Save it for later, right up until the credits roll.
Two inks and a little nerve
Thrown ink leaves a mark that a careful brush would struggle to repeat. The shape of a splash depends on the throw as much as the surface, leaving room for a happy accident. This set covers the banana in splats of two colors against a deep ground. With sky and lilac on deep wine, the mess looks suspiciously well dressed.
A painted island interlude
Gouache is watercolor with enough opacity to cover what is underneath, drying to a matte surface. A painter can build a world in those quiet, solid colors. This one has islands with temple steps and waterfall pools, and a banana with little reason to hurry. Cherry blossom season offers a perfectly reasonable excuse to linger.
Fruit from the woodblock
A woodblock print begins by cutting away the wood that will never touch the ink. The raised surface carries the picture to paper, so every printed line has to survive some carving first. Into that patient process comes a banana. The warbler in the plum blossoms gives it some respectable company.
Fruit, pending engineering
Technical drawings put a part on paper so its shape can be understood and made again. A banana is an unusually forgiving subject for all that precision. This set treats it as a machined part, even when the drawing is on white vellum. The copper part on green drafting linen looks as if it ought to come with a part number.
A study in glass and light
A studio softbox spreads light across a broad surface, making its reflection in glass part of the composition. A grid of glass cells gives that light plenty of edges to work with. The banana becomes a small lighting study, with as much attention paid to the glass as to the fruit. For once, a banana is being judged on its lighting.
A softer sort of glass
Glass can be frosted by roughening its surface, so light scatters instead of passing through in a clear view. That gives a glassmaker a way to soften an object without changing its shape. The banana takes that softer finish rather seriously. On oxblood velvet, even a banana can pass for an heirloom.
An adventure in your pocket
A pocket game console asks a small screen to contain a much larger world. A few marks can become a lighthouse cliff, and suddenly the edge of the screen feels like the edge of an adventure. These banana scenes borrow that compact sense of possibility. The treasure room is still waiting.
A pressing matter of bananas
Letterpress starts with a raised printing surface, inked and pressed against paper. The same pressure can leave an impression even without ink. It is a wonderfully elaborate way to make a row of bananas look entirely official. One in foil is allowed to consider itself the important one.
A curve, one block at a time
Voxel art builds a form from little blocks of volume, much as pixel art builds a picture from squares. A curve becomes a staircase, so making a banana requires a certain faith in small steps. These versions place the result against soft-colored skies. Under a low golden sun, it looks as though the building work was worth staying late for.
A generous helping of paint
In impasto painting, a brush or palette knife leaves paint thick enough to stand above the surface. The marks stay visible, so light can catch the ridges as well as the color. The banana is built out of those marks, giving the fruit more substance than a flat coat of color. The scrape is part of the finish.
A place to spend a season
Landscape painters can return to the same view for years and still find a different picture in the weather. A pond in spring blossom has a different story to tell from a pond in winter. In these soft painted scenes, the banana is the familiar shape you carry from one season to the next. The seasons change; the banana stays put.
A meeting of glass and stone
Inlay fits one material into a recess cut in another, so the join becomes part of the design. This set puts that care into a banana, with brass inlay alongside versions in cased glass. Against Calacatta Gold or blush paper, it has the bearing of a small decorative object. Gold leaf is available if it still seems underdressed.
We like the idea that even a banana can have a world of its own. This collection is part of ours, with more sets and stories still to come. We hope you find a favorite for your workspace.
