The Five Rules of Good Icon Design
Five fundamental principles for creating legible, efficient, and consistent icons, developed over twelve years by Streamline's team of icon designers.
-
Good icons are universal
Choose images that are widely understood and don’t rely heavily on cultural or contextual nuances, ensuring meaning is clear and accessible to a diverse audience whilst using established visual standards for abstract concepts.
-
Good icons are simple
Design icons as simplified as possible to avoid irrelevant information without falling into abstraction, retaining enough recognizable elements to convey meaning without being overly complex or difficult to decode.
-
Good icons are legible
Enable effective reduction so icons work in extreme contexts without compromising legibility, maintaining adaptability across various sizes and visual conditions from mobile apps to responsive web design.
-
Good icons are nonverbal
Avoid alphabetic characters that depend on specific language and cultural context, using visual tools that transcend language barriers, with exceptions only for widely accepted conventions like ‘P’ for parking.
-
Good icons are consistent
Design icon sets based on well-defined construction guidelines where uniform structure and visual constants coexist, maintaining consistency in size, shapes, and overall style to create cohesive and intuitive visual language.