Icon Design & Symbolism: Delve into the art of crafting clear and meaningful icons for user interfaces

More than Tiny Pictures, Icons are a visual language that can convey powerful and complex ideas simply, effectively guiding users through your interface. This newsletter dives deep into the world of icon design & symbolism and covers how you can create icons with clear visual meaning for your UIs.

Why are Good Icons Important?

Universal Language: Icons need no text and can be globally understood.

Better User Experience (UX): Obvious icons lessen cognitive load leading to intuitive navigation and saved time on part of the user.

Strengthen Brand Identity — Icons, if well-designed and implemented correctly can help you to enforce your brand identity keeping a unified style with all visual elements.

The Visual Storytelling of Iconography:

Clear & Straightforward: Do it simple! The key rule is the use of clear, easy iconic metaphors that your audience can comprehend at a glance.

Uniformity & Palette: Keep icons to a uniform visual style, so all your own and other branded files can look cohesive.

Usability Testing: This is testing iconography with real users to make sure that they can understand the meaning and purpose behind it

Symbolism & Cultural Context:

Eye colors have different cultural meanings so be cautious! A given symbol may mean one thing in cultures and quite another in their counterparts. Make sure your icons are universally understood by researching your specific target audience.

Free icons for your project

The Noun Project — Inspiring icons from a vast library of free and open-source illustrations. Image of The Noun Project

Some more free and paid icon libraries Iconfinder: A collection of plenty of icons in different styles. Image of Iconfinder

Design Better Podcast, Icon Design Episode Design Better Podcast Image

Design Your Own Icons Today