Icons are small creative symbols that portray a lot of information. They can be found anywhere nowadays and play a massive role in the success of User Interfaces. Whether you are a User Interface (UI) designer or a User Experience (UX) expert looking to enhance your visual design skills, the icon design process is always a crucial one to have in your toolkit.
When it comes to designing an icon from scratch for a new UI, it’s a must to invest enough time in the process. There are also some guidelines that you should keep in mind to ensure that your icon is recognizable and user-friendly.
In this blog, we will share some Icon design tips that our professional icon artists use. These tips will assist you while designing a minimal, recognizable, and user-friendly Icon for your new project.
Without any further delay, let’s dive into it!
7 golden tips for the Icon Design
There are 7 well-picked elements that you should keep in mind as you design the Icons.
1 – Focus on the Grid
Everything in the digital design is catered by the grid. Icons are similar in terms of that. While designing an icon you would want to pay close attention to the pixel grid and how your icon fits into the proportions of your grid.
The simplest way to make sure your icon gets embedded with your grid properly is to set the digital value to whole numbers instead of using decimals that cause your edges to get blurry.
Below we have attached an icon that is crafted by following the grid rules and fixed into the grid accordingly.
2 – Follow Standards
It is always tempting to get one of the most unique and creative icons out there. The creativity of your mind can kick in while designing an icon design too.
Unlike logo design where you got more flexibility to implement your creativity as you please, icons design is a bit different.
While designing an icon you have to make sure of some standards. For example.
Home icons are commonly used in almost every UI you would get to see. When you hear the word Home, you get an image of a House you use on your screen to direct the user back to the home screen. Now here you cannot implement much creativity because the “House” icon is considered as standard.
Just like these, many icons have a specific representation that the users are affiliated with and can recognize easily.
If you want to make it a bit unique or match it with your Brand Guide, you can try to alter the basic design but make sure it doesn’t spoil the true identity of the icon.
3 – Keep it Minimal
Don’t add many details to your icons. Icons are usually supposed to go on the screen and are small in size.
For example, a navigation bar of your phone – so they lost details when they go smaller and make the icon look intense and unprofessional.
Always try to keep your icon design minimal making sure they look HD and classy when they fix on their final places.
4 – Follow the Theme
When you design a set of icons, they should look like a family.
The design touch should be kept consistent, so none of the icons look odd.
For example, if you are using rounded corners for some of the portions of your icons, make sure you use rounded corners for your entire icon family making them look linked.
5 – Include the Spacing’s
While designing an icon make sure that you keep them proportional, and every element of it should not overlap or get too close to another element. That would lose the icon’s true meaning when it gets fixed in its final place.
6 – Test and Audit your Icons
Once you are done crafting your icons, make sure to take a word of mouth from your friends and family. Ask them what word pops up in their mind as soon as they look at your icon.
Test those icons out by placing them on a UI screen, to check the final look, proportions, consistency, and overall user experience.
7 – Build them from Basic shapes
The best way to design your icons from scratch is to use basic shapes, as used while designing a logo. You can craft any concept you want by using basic shapes and by altering them.
It’s easier to customize them or do end-time changes if required due to the set of layers in the editor.
If you want to get some inspiration or want some trendy icons sets for your application or website – you can visit our Icon Design services and save your time while we do it for you the way you want.
Over to you!
By adopting these tips you can easily craft almost any sort of icon for your projects and create variations out of them flawlessly and creatively.