App icon for user-friendly Mac online backup software

Buckets

We're an independent software development shop building Buckets, the best online backup software for the Mac.

Buckets is a desktop application for the Mac.

BUCKETS IS:

Super simple: Just select a folder (or drag it in) and it'll be backed up continuously. No settings to worry about.

Nothing to remember: Your important files are backed up automatically without you having to remember to insert CDs or external disk drives.

Safe: Your online backups are in your own Amazon S3 account, so you keep ownership of your data. No risk of CD read errors or disk drive failure.

Painless restore: Just drag and drop a file or folder from your backups to your desktop or anywhere you choose.

OUR SOFTWARE:

makes the user feel safe;
is reliable;
is easy to use;
makes the user feel like he/she is good at using it.

Our target audience for Buckets is every independent Mac user (not users of corporate Macs that are backed up by an IT department).

Our users are not technical at all. They will never need to understand arcane backup terminology. They just want to setup their files for automatic backup, browse their backups, search for files in their backups, and restore files from their backups.

We're looking for an app icon in the current glossy Mac desktop-app style. Some examples of the style:
1. the clock icon at http://timelessapp.com/
2. the icons at http://graphicpeel.com/

It's not an iPhone app, so we're not looking for the rounded-corner square background. We're looking for an icon with no background.

The name "Buckets" refers to the "buckets" of content that you have on your hard drive and want to back up -- your personal files, your work-project files, etc.

So far we've been thinking about a beach-pail icon (http://www.getbuckets.com/wp-conten…75_cap.jpg), or maybe a paint bucket. But we're open to all new great ideas.

An icon that we really like is:
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_…s7BvTd.jpg
The things we like about that icon are: the part attaching the handle to the bucket looks realistic; the shape of the handle is realistic; the lighting is more realistic; and it's turned a bit instead of straight on. In general we like photorealistic.

The colors should connote something safe, reliable, approachable; not aggressive or alarming.

The app icon must be color, 128x128 pixels, in Adobe Illustrator file format.

Although the deliverable for this contest is a 128x128 color icon, the icon concept must be simple enough that it can scale down to favico size (16x16 pixel) and still be recognizable. A silhouette of the color icon seems like a nice approach -- the Apple logo is a good example of this (http://www.apple.com/favicon.ico) -- but we're open to all great ideas.

The icon concept must also work well in 16x16 black-and-white form as a Mac status-bar icon, just like the other status-bar icons (http://www.reitshamer.com/statusbaricons.png).