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7 Principles of Icon Design
Clarity, Readability, Alignment, Brevity, Consistency, Personality, Ease of Use.
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More in the iconography series:• Foundations of Iconography• 5 Ways to Create a Settings Icon• Icon Grids & Keylines Demystified• Pixel-Snapping in Icon Design• 3 Classic Icon Families
Creating a high-quality icon family requires a thoughtful approach, a trained eye, a bit of iteration, and a lot of practice. Below, I’ll illustrate the hallmarks of quality through 7 principles and plenty of real-world examples. The goal is to tune you to the key attributes of great icon design.
Clarity
An icon’s primary goal is to communicate a concept quickly.
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In this flurry of symbols, which are clear to you? Drivers learn these over time, but many are unintuitive; you need a manual to decipher their meaning.
Here’s roughly how they stack up for me: