I need an idea for two icons

[Deefstes]

OK, seriously, I am at wits end. I'm developing software and needed to design some graphics for the software. I am a developer and not a graphic designer. While I do have some graphic design skills it can sometimes be surprisingly difficult for a developer who thinks mostly in abstract concepts to come up with ideas for visual constructs.

There are currently two that I am simply stuck with so I thought I'd turn to the masses at ScubaBoard. Maybe I should start with listing the concepts that I needed to visualise and then show what I have so far. This way you'll get an idea of the visual feel and hopefully someone can give me a nice idea for the two remaining icons that I need.

Users: Fairly self explanatory I guess, these are the people who have logins on the system. This is my icon for Users:

Items and Item Types: Items refer to the various stock items that the system manages. Our usage of the system has specific items defined (credit card terminals etc.) but some of our sister companies would define their own items, it can be anything really, printers, laptops, chocolate bars, beer kegs, etc. Item Types can be seen as Item Templates. In other words, there might be one Item Type called "beer keg" and then several physical Items which are all of the type "beer keg" but each with it's own serial number. Items are the tangible version of the more abstract Item Types.

Bundles and Bundle Types: A Bundle is basically just a collection of Items. Similar to the Items/Item Types concept above, the abstract version of a tangible Bundle is a Bundle Type.

Contracts: Again, fairly straight forward. There could be one or more Contracts in the system for each User. It's basically just an agreement between than User and the company to rent/buy/loan certain Items.

Reports: Well, I'm not going to explain what Reports are.

Actions: Every time a logged in User takes some sort of an action (sign a Contract, put different Items in a Bundle, define an Item Type, etc.), an Action is stored in the database.

Calls: This can be viewed as a conversation and each "conversation" is of a certain type. One example might be "dispatch a bundle of such and such type to user so and so". This Call would then consist of a number of steps (Call Events) in a specific order, starting with defining a Contract for said User, then bundling together specific Items that match the types dictated by the Bundle Type, and ultimately courier the prepared Bundle to the User.

Now here is where I'm stuck:
Call Events: As described above, Call Events are the individual steps that make up Calls. In a similar way that Items are the building blocks of Bundles, so it can be viewed that Call Events are the building blocks of Calls. I need an idea for a graphic that depicts these. It would be great if it could be related to the megaphone above but it doesn't necessarily have to. If you have a better idea to replace the megaphone, and then an appropriate graphic for the Call Events, I'm all ears.

Attributes: Most entities in the system can have Attributes associated with them. These are just extra bits of info on the entity in question. A User can have an Attribute for gender (male/female). An Item could have an Attribute for colour (blue/grey/black/white). A Call could have an Attribute for priority (high/medium/low) and so forth. I still need to come up with a good idea for a graphic for this as well.

I'd really appreciate if someone could help me out here. I just need ideas, no graphics as such. A line drawing at most, but a description would suffice.

TIA

 

[TimKy]

How about just using simple geometric shapes for each call event that move into the mouthpiece end of the megaphone? i.e. stars, blocks, balls, etc. that are then transformed and come out as the ring (call) on the other end.

As far as the attributes go, what about simple puzzle pieces. Each piece of the puzzle represents one of the attributes that in total make up the entity.

This is probably not what you were looking for but, after a bourbon or two, it seemed worth posting.

Good luck!

 

[Peacie]

Okay, I get a little silly on Fridays. But reading the opening post conjured images of telephone poles and telephone receivers for the call items, and while I really like the puzzle piece idea I got a Mr. PotatoHead visual for the attributes. Call me crazy, but I'll just ignore you!

 

[Deefstes]

Thanks, those are exactly the sort of ideas I was looking for. I particularly like the suggestion of puzzle pieces for "attributes". The geometric shapes going into the megaphone is a brilliant idea but it might be difficult to incorporate that much detail into an image that will eventually be sized down to something like 32x32 pixels. I might just use the geometric shapes without the megaphone.

The telephone receiver idea is also great, in fact, it makes better sense to use that for a "call" than a megaphone.

Thanks guys.