Iconography is a fascinating field that explores the visual language of symbols, signs, and images. These visual elements convey meaning, produce emotions, and serve as powerful communication tools across various domains. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll learn about the origins, significance, and contemporary applications of iconography.
What Is Iconography?
What Is Iconography?
Icons are more than just decoration; they’re a powerful language that transcends written words. By using clear and consistent icons, you can guide users intuitively through your website or app, enhancing navigation and overall user experience (UX). This is especially important in today’s world where users expect a smooth and efficient interaction.
In web design, first impressions are crucial. Icons can be the visual handshake that welcomes users and sets the tone for their experience. Well-designed icons not only communicate actions effectively but also contribute to the overall aesthetics of your interface. This creates a visually pleasing and memorable first impression.
How to Design Icons?
You can follow this 4 step process to design icons, here I am using a very popular prototyping tool called Figma.
Figma
Figma is a browser based UI and UX creation application with design, prototyping and code generation tools. Figma also comes with its desktop application but firstly, it is known for its browser compatible seamless experience and secondly, the principles behind the desktop app remains the same – it provides the same experience and still uses network connection rather than locally downloading all the tools, basically it remains an online app in both the cases.
1. Start with Grids: Great icons are made using grids, for designing better icons you should first define your bounding box and a save zone within your bounding box and then set a few key lines. For professional icons one must use grid as a template for making the icons proportion uniform. Also while creating grids make sure that the grid size must be same for all the icons, stick to the same size usually 24px * 24px.
2. Shape and orientation of the icon: The next step of the design process would be to work on the shape of the icon and get a basic icon ready. By orientation we mean that if the icon appears to be too narrow vertically, rotate it maybe diagonally or in any other orientation.
3. Corners and Stroke: The next step would be to choose a proper stroke for the icon and work on the corners (make the rounded or sharp, etc.). Ideal thickness in most of the cases is 2px and rounded corners with 3px border radius. This will help you obtain a professional icon that is representative of the action it performs.
4. Review and iterate: The final step of the process of designing icon would be to test the final icon design. The feedback you receive after that must to taken into account and the design should be iterated accordingly until a final design is obtained that satisfies the usability tests.
Best Practices
- Your icon must be your original: Originality is an more important aspect as we think it to be when it comes to designing icons. The dilemma in iconography is that while on one hand icons should appear common across all websites to make them understandable and representative of the action that will be performed upon clicking it, one also has to avoid coping the generic icons everybody else is using in their design.
- Keep it Minimalistic: Contrary to popular belief, minimalistic graphics are more appealing to the users specially in the case of Icons. Minimalist icons perform better than complex ones in capturing the user’s attention since they do not put much cognitive load on the users. Not only they are much well taken by the customers, this also retains the icon in the mind of the customers making it easier to understand and more impactful.
- Icons must be versatile: While designing icons, you may not always know which background it will be added on, and at some cases, the backgrounds are also changed and that is why your Icon design must be versatile, by this we mean that it should be able to work with different backgrounds. In order to come up with an versatile icon, you can follow a simple process of designing icon or set of Icons and testing them visually with different backgrounds.
- Visual Balance – follow color theory: Icons we design must be is visual balance. By this we mean that the icons we design should follow a visual language and follows the color theory. For this make sure that the colors and the contrast being used in the stroke or the background (if any) should match and complement one another.
- Take feedback and iterate: Once the final icon is ready, your job is not done yet. The first iteration of your Icon may not be perfect but taking feedback from the users can provide valuable insights about the icon design and what things should be improved. In order to continuously improve the Icon we have to that user feedback and iterate our design.
Conclusion
Iconography is the use of visual elements what we call as Icons in order to represent any idea, subject or action that is to be performed. These Icons are visual symbols or simple figure that look depict what action will be taken if we click them. The key things you should remember while designing icons is originality of icons, usage of colors, tint, contrast, etc. to set up a proper visual balance and make sure to keep the icon minimal. Make sure to follow the points we mentioned in our article in order to design professional icons for your next project.