This week we discussed all things icons, from the history of icon design right through to what makes a good icon and how they are used.
Icons originated as pixilated black and white forms in the 80’s. While there is evidence of some basic icons being used in early interfaces at this time, it is accepted that Susan Kare is the mother of stylish, well thought out icon design. The first icons she designed where the cut, copy and apple paint icons. She later redesigned the majority of Apples icons and design aspects and eventually became creative director of Apple Creative Services. It is widely known that Kare's design principles are “meaning, memorability, and clarity”. Amiga introduced colour into icons. Icon design evolved very quickly through each decade and distinct categories evolved.
I found this text extremely helpful and interesting. My main takeaway was how to make an icon set cohesive. I think a cohesive icon set is extremely important in creating a well designed UI. Sticking to one style is a great way to achieve this. Maintaining the same stylistics is also important and slightly different to design style. Galaburda gave an example that one can create a thousand different outline icons, but one has to pay attention to the edges for example — are they rounded or sharp? Consideration also needs to be payed to size. This does not mean just geometrically, as visually a square will always look bigger than a circle as it takes up more space. Therefore, you need to adjust accordingly. Maintaining a colour palette is also key to success.
I found his logic surrounding grids also very interesting. He says:
“Good icon sets have a grid, but the worst sets hold strictly onto that grid”
I think this is very important as imposing too many restrictions on your designs can stifle creativity and be unproductive. I will definitely keep this in mind when it comes to designing my icon set.
My view of icons has always been that they are extremely important in any UI. I always struggled in past projects with icon design as I had always just went in with little knowledge of what makes a good icon and hoped for the best. I also never really sketched it first and went straight into designing digitally. I hope that I will find designing icons easier in this project. I really want to focus on prioritising understandability and functionality over everything else. That said, I also want my icons to be visually interesting and mesh well with the rest of my interface.
This week in my master apprentice exercise, I took things up a notch and started creating my icons on illustrator. I had only used illustrator once before but I have decided to keep all my illustrative work on there as it is a more specified tool for such an endeavour. I also want to be fully versed in as many programmes as possible. At first I found it jarring as I usually find adobe programmes that way, but I feel quite comfortable now using this tool and I do see the benefits of using illustrator instead of Figma. I was pleased with all of these icons and I think this exercise has really developed my appreciation for icon design.