The icon sketch pad.
The icon serves as a face to your product or brand. Its form, color, balance, and boldness combine to suggest a product's offerings. It also serves to demonstrate the quality of those offerings. As a parallel to this; think of a house. A dilapidated exterior would suggest the same of its interior.
Have you ever used a great app/tool/service that nobody else seems to know about? The icon and the way it feels plays a strong role in helping to adopt a user base.
This is why UI Stencils made the icon sketch pad: to craft the first impression. A well designed and intentioned product without strong iconography can go unnoticed by potential users.
The importance of deliberating over the design of an icon becomes most apparent in the app store. When viewing search results in the app store an unthought icon amongst its peers can be ridiculed or worse completely denied.
Take your time when you design your next icon. Invest your thoughts, feelings and take multiple vantages on the project because both payoff and risk are too great to ignore. To help our users do this we made a grid of four boxes on the front page and nine on the back to help ideas evolve and stay organized. Show your icons to your friends, reiterate, and refine. And, most importantly - have fun!