February 19, 2008

How not to design an icon

Icons are great on a site they add a different feel to how the whole thing works, but sometimes the icons are just plain wrong for the site, these may be because they are not made well or they are just not very well designed. Either way a bad looking icon can make a good site look not so good.

But how do know when an icon is good or not, here’s a guide:

Insufficient differentiation between icons

Too many elements in one icon

Unnecessary elements

Lack of unity of style within a set of icons

Unnecessary perspective and shadows in small icons

Overly original metaphors

National or social characteristics not being taken into account

Images of real interface elements in icons

Text inside icons

Outside the pixel framework

These points will help a designer take all of the guess work out of designing an icon and show the common mistakes that can be made.