Icons are love

[hafital]

My paid account status is ending soon, along with my extra icons. I can no longer in good conscious give money to livejournal. I am, however, very likely to at least try out the ad-based account option, at least just to see if it's annoying or not, and it allows me to not have to move my pics off just yet and there's a ton of icons there that I don't have a home for. The only part of this that makes me sad is that I'm a big ol' icon whore, and that will have to go away, but I'm reconciled to this. Mostly. *g*

[Poll #1148539]

Please comment if you have more to add! I'd love to find out how people choose their icons.

Comments

[destina.livejournal.com]

I choose icons that make me happy. :) Sometimes that means I choose them for color or shape, as much as character. And sometimes I choose them for sparkle. See icon. *g*

[hafital.livejournal.com]

HEE. Excellent. :D

[arenee1999]

I try to have at least one icon for each of the fandoms I'm active in and a few non-fandom icons. Right now I have:
3 Non-Fandom icons
3 Blakes 7 icons
2 Highlander icons
2 Buffy icons
1 (each for) Tin Man, The Beatles, The Who, Torchwood and Doctor Who

[hafital.livejournal.com]

I try to have at least one icon for each of the fandoms I'm active in and a few non-fandom icons.

That's how I tend to do it, as well.

[carose59.livejournal.com]

When I came up with the idea for having an lj that was primarily posts about my RL, I decided to use my childhood nickname (CaRose) and have a theme of roses. All my icons have roses in them, and only three of them have anything to do with fandom. And almost all of them match up with a tag. It helps me organize my posts in my own mind.

I can't imagine anyone else doing this. *g*

[hafital.livejournal.com]

:D When I first got my LJ, I was really wary of how I represented myself in icon form. Almost always female and some sort of art, but then I all of a sudden I needed very icon available. It was like opening the floodgates. heh.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

While fandom is certainly relevant to my icon choices, the key issue for me is actually whether the icon suggests a mood or emotion that is liable to be appropriate to the comments I'm making. So I have icons for comfort, and icons for squee, and icons for food, and icons for birthdays, and icons for sexiness, etc. I really need a "Hee!" icon, because I've noticed I comment with that a lot. (:

[hafital.livejournal.com]

I tend to go by fandom, character, pairing, but then flounder a bit when I want a particular emotion that's like happy or friendly or love and I find that I've, in a fit of show love, uploaded 20 Jack Bauer icons where he's bound and bloody or torturing someone or nearly dead. So, yeah, I think I need to think about that. *g*

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

20 Jack Bauer icons where he's bound and bloody or torturing someone or nearly dead

I can see how that wouldn't come up very often in conversation!

This icon, however, I tend to use a lot. (:

[anoel.livejournal.com]

I try to have an icon for fandoms, characters and pairings that I'm likely to post or comment about. Ones that I love from the show or are especially pretty or feel like they represent me are likely to be chosen. And then I like to have mood specific icons and a criteria I often use in keeping an icon is whether I can use it outside fandom useage, if it has more than one meaning.

[hafital.livejournal.com]

I always love captured moments in icons. Like this one. :D

[rattlecatcher.livejournal.com]

Of the ones I made, I choose the ones that suck the least. The others are gifts/bribes to sit my ass down and photoshop up a storm. Which I need to do.

At the beginning, the ads were somewhere between annoying and "No, seriously, wtf?" But I tend to get used to an environment, and stop seeing the individual elements - everything just becomes background to me. Most of the time now, I just notice the WTF ones.

[hafital.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info, re: the plus account. I tend to be blind to ads as well.

I used to make tons of icons, all in my lj (via my profile) but haven't had the time lately. I'm much more into capturing moments in icons, like little visual haikus.

[rhi]

I tend to pick icons of favorite characters (Connor, Krycek, Matthew), or favorite images (labyrinths, the moon, water), or a mood (happy, angry, WTF). And I have no idea how I class the icon on this reply, but the quote is one of my favorites, so....

[hafital.livejournal.com]

*nod nod*

I go character first, fandom second. And then I like to have some art ones for when I'm feeling like representing myself as myself and not via a fandom/character/pairing.