SixLinks: Icon Pasture

The sections that we left behind

The Big Picture
The section that eventually became "Get the Facts", the big picture icon served as the model for the style we tried to maintain throughout the site: simple, clear, elegant, and understandible.

Bugs
Once upon a time, actions were called fixes - fixes for the 'bugs' we had as a society. Ultimately, the metaphor wasn't good enough, but the bug icon still remains my favorite.

Home
Home was your starting place on the site. It doubled for a while in the scope of fixes (it may still be around in places!)

Community
We still use a variation of this one - simply put, your community. This, big picture, and your part were created within about 15 minutes of each other, and were the core of the original icons

Get Inspired
Get inspired was a section that ultimately lacked good direction - you now know it better as community and even more. This was one of the proposed icons. The trees were unflinchingly stolen from Steven's Quantum Imagery art.

Sponsors
I loved the watering can metaphor, but ultimately, the icon was too sloppy. Plus, we dropped the section, so it was never redone in higher quality.

Earth
The world icon was (and is) used for scope, as well in the global warming link. Notably, those continents intentionally don't look like the earth from any reasonable angle. I was tired of seeing north-america centric maps, so simply made an alternate view that everyone could relate to.

Your Part
Still one of my favorite icons, your part hoped to capture the new growth and inspiration of an unfolding leaf. Very few things captivate me as much as trees coming alive after the winter - I hoped show a bit of that magic!

Fixes
Fixes, the counterpart to bugs (now actions) seemed to have a hammer as a logical icon. After all, the whole world's a nail.

Laws
Once upon a time, we planned to have a searchable database of all the environmentally-related laws, across the world. It'd allow people to quickly see if there was a solar rebate, etc in their area. It was very quickly apparent that such a section was a full-time job for about a team of twenty. It's on the way, way back burner.

Science
Jeff loves science education. He's a science educator at heart, and we both thought good fundamentals and facts were key to the big picture. The science section became an outlet for Jeff's tremendous background knowledge, but ultimately became unwieldy, and started to head in a more technical direction. So, we integrated the science throughout "Get the Facts", as it should be! Note that this icon lives on in the SixLinks lab icon!

Visuals
We originally had a section just for graphs, charts, and data. We later realized that these made a whole lot more sense integrated with the facts. So, the icon was sent to pasture.