Icons: Creating a custom set
Icons, icons, icons – they are everywhere. We get requests for icons all the time; for annual reports, infographics and branding, to name a few.
A quick search will bring up hundreds of free and stock icons you can use. But using icons comes with disadvantages as well as advantages; so let’s talk icons!
Why use them?
Icons give a visual ‘lift’ to a design and make the accompanying text more appealing. They help bring an infographic to life, they can be an integral part of a brand scheme or even a brand identity. They are an easy graphic device and circumnavigate the need to find that elusive photograph to illustrate your point.
You could argue that the Underground symbol is an icon as well as being iconic. They are everywhere.
What do they mean?
One of the problems with using icons is their meaning, especially if you are using stock icons and you want to illustrate a specific subject. I talk about this at length in my book; Know Your Onions: Corporate Identity; how do you choose or create the right icon to clearly illustrate your subject matter?
Some icons are ubiquitous and therefore they are instantly recognisable and easy to understand. Think of the ‘play’ or ‘pause’ icon, you know what they look like and they always look the same; everybody knows what they mean.
But consider what would you choose from your stock icon set when you want to illustrate ‘added value’ or ‘ESG’? That’s not so easy. Time and time again we see publications where iconography has been chosen and the icon bears little or no relevance to the subject matter.
Admittedly, some subjects are near impossible to illustrate in a meaningful way and no matter how refined your search might be, there isn’t always an icon out there that does the trick. So what typically happens people pick something meaningless and hope for the best.
What are the potential problems?
There are other potential problems when searching, selecting and using icons, aside from the ones online not illustrating your subject matter. Here’s a few of them:
Mixing styles: Using icons from different sets, so that they do not match in style, creates a visual inconsistency and gives your document a ‘clip art’ feel, diminishing its gravitas.
A multitude of colours: You icons should stick to the corporate colours and remain on brand.
Inconsistent line widths: The icons you use should have a consistent line width and visually be the same size throughout the document.
The same ones are seen everywhere: We see the same free icons used over and over again.
Why you should consider a custom set
Commissioning a custom set of icons for your organisation removes all of the issues listed above. They are a worthy investment and deliver fantastic value for money, once you have a set, they are yours forever. A custom icon set delivers consistency and builds brand recognition. Should the need arise, a new icon can be added to the set at very little cost.
What process do we take to deliver a custom set of icons?
The first step is to list the subjects you want to illustrate, focus on what you really need rather than adding lots of terms that are too generic or unnecessary. This list of terms should be definitive, or at least that is what you should aim for.
The next step for us is to sketch the icons. Yes, sketch, with a pen or pencil. Drawing up icons takes time and a sketch is a really quick way of showing the client what we intend to deliver. At this stage we will suggest the style we will use; will they be solid, linear, multiplied? We seek approval of these sketches and style choice before we draw up the final icons,
Once approved we draw up crisp, elegant, impactful icons and deliver them in two formats, EPS and PNG.