Formįorm is the underlying structure of an icon, or how it is made. For the sake of relative brevity, we have focused on what we consider to be the three main attributes. No doubt, more than three attributes make up effective icon design, but the three elaborated below are a good place to start. Even if you’re creating a single icon, these three attributes are still implied and can be extrapolated from a single design. When designing a new icon set, consider each of these attributes in an iterative approach, starting with the general (form) and proceeding to the specific (recognizability). Icons that are well designed exhibit a methodical and deliberate approach to the three major attributes that make up any icon design: form, aesthetic unity and recognition. Three Attributes Of Effective Icon Design If you are a print designer reading this, all of the principles covered are applicable, but you can largely ignore the pixel-perfection pieces. The typical 300 dots per inch (DPI) of printed material makes pixel-perfection essentially meaningless. Note that while the guidelines discussed in the article are geared to web icons, they are generally applicable to print icons as well.
The image on the right shows the redesigned icon, which implements the principles in this article. The image on the left above shows the original icon.
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In the sections that follow, we will explain how to methodically go from before to after. The image below shows the before and after versions of Kem’s icon. The icon had potential but was not quite polished enough to be considered “premium quality.” We provided Kem with some easy tips to follow, and, with a little reworking, his icons were ready for approval as a premium icon set. In the example images that follow in this article, the six steps discussed will be applied to a reworking of an icon of a dog (a Corgi, to be exact) that was recently submitted by an Iconfinder user named Kem Bardly. Instead, we will share very specific, actionable suggestions for how the designer can improve the icons. Unlike many other marketplaces, we rarely reject sets that don’t quite meet our quality requirements outright. To achieve this, we are constantly aware of the difference between “not quite good enough” and “premium quality.” The difference is often very small and usually requires minimal changes, but it has a great impact on the design and value of the icon set.
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Thousands of high-quality premium icon sets and hundreds of great free sets are available.Įvery icon set submitted to Iconfinder is reviewed and evaluated for potential appeal to our website users and for potential commercial value as premium icons. Icon and vector marketplaces like Iconfinder (where I work) are making well-designed vector icons an inexpensive and readily available resource for web and print designers. Part of becoming a great designer is learning when to break the rules and when to follow them, as we will demonstrate here. The six steps discussed in this article should be seen as a guide, not a dogmatic list of rules. The principles of effective icon design have been discussed at length by icon designer John Hicks of Hicks Design in his book The Icon Handbook, as well as by Google in its material design guidelines for system icons. The steps follow the basics of sound icon design, including consistency, legibility and clarity.
This article discusses a set of design guidelines in six steps. Every icon set submitted to Iconfinder is reviewed and evaluated for potential appeal to our website users and for potential commercial value as premium icons.
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