Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Noun Project – Icons for Everything

thenounproject.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 147 posts

Re: Noun Project – Icons for Everything

#21

Post by arjie »

everyone wrote: post #7

Little pictograms for buttons are often extremely vague and open to interpretation. Eg. Heres a random game where upon opening it I was immediately confused http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/apk/images/color-switch_1.jp... (also the icons are all animated / rotating, making it even more confusing, made this game menu stick out in my memory as an egregious example) Some designers seems to love the minimalism of if thoug…

> Imo Text is the clearest thing you can put on a button to tell the user what that button does 'save' 'load' 'new game' etc. Yes, it will need to be translated, but thats simply putting in more work for a better product.

I strongly disagree. I'm looking at my browser chrome right now and if the back, forward, reload, home, and bookmark buttons were displayed as that, it would be _awful_.

Even thinking about my IDE, if IntelliJ said "Class with main method" instead of the little C with play button icon or "Library class for which source is decompiled", it would drive me insane. That's most certainly making a worse product.

It's all about the language you can create and sure, no one is going to learn a new language to play some 2 minute game, but lots of great interfaces require a new language. It's about optimizing for the experienced user instead of the newbie.

Of course there are places where it should be the other way around, but it's not universal.

Re: Noun Project – Icons for Everything

#22

Post by xs »

I think $40/yr or $2/icon is too far out of reach for me to use these icons as a proof of concept, blog, or early website launches. I have a website idea which would use about 100 of these icons, but I can't justify the cost yet since it brings in no revenue.

Re: Noun Project – Icons for Everything

#23

Post by panic »

apo wrote: post #9

Valuable resource with many uses beyond putting icons on buttons. For example: - source graphics for figures in books and articles - inspiration for new ways of expressing an idea graphically - gauging variation in visual representation of a concept - learning how to make a particular shape with vector graphics - logo ideas

Not to mention points of interest on maps!

Re: Noun Project – Icons for Everything

#24

Post by codefined »

backpropaganda wrote: post #18

Let's go back to 1000 BC, and re-invent Chinese.

I can just imagine some over-worked scribe attempting to draw one of the more complex shapes like:

https://thenounproject.com/browse/?i=1037952 https://thenounproject.com/term/keyboard/1018886/

I think there was a reason Chinese wasn't based upon the images of the things they were writing about!

Re: Noun Project – Icons for Everything

#26

Post by johannes1234321 »

gfody wrote: post #17

searched for "save" .. ten pages of variations on the 3.5" diskette icon all labeled "floppy" even though diskettes aren't floppy. I wonder when a new save icon will emerge?

The paradigm of "saving" is going away. In "new" apps this can hardly be found. Users expect that all stuff is saved automatically all the time. Files and such are a legacy from the old desktop world.

Re: Noun Project – Icons for Everything

#27

Post by yoz-y »

everyone wrote: post #7

Little pictograms for buttons are often extremely vague and open to interpretation. Eg. Heres a random game where upon opening it I was immediately confused http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/apk/images/color-switch_1.jp... (also the icons are all animated / rotating, making it even more confusing, made this game menu stick out in my memory as an egregious example) Some designers seems to love the minimalism of if thoug…

That really depends. Can you imagine photoshop's interface if it were all text? This is an extreme example but more generally I think text is better for discoverability but icons are better for visual memory and thus better suited for buttons in applications you use often.

On desktop there are always tool tips. On touch interfaces this was not yet figured out.

Re: Noun Project – Icons for Everything

#28

Post by desdiv »

sosodaft wrote: post #3

TOS acceptance box and "you can send me emails" box combined. Classy. All I wanted was a bacon egg and cheese icon...

The icons are embedded SVG so you can just copy and paste it from the page source. The icons are Creative Commons licensed so you don't even need to accept their TOS.

Re: Noun Project – Icons for Everything

#29

Post by icyblue0108 »

everyone wrote: post #7

Little pictograms for buttons are often extremely vague and open to interpretation. Eg. Heres a random game where upon opening it I was immediately confused http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/apk/images/color-switch_1.jp... (also the icons are all animated / rotating, making it even more confusing, made this game menu stick out in my memory as an egregious example) Some designers seems to love the minimalism of if thoug…

Well that specific random game was actually one of the most notable hits on smartphone in 2016. I believe for someone who are familiar with video games in general, these icons are very common though. But yea the icon rotation might be annoying at some point.
Post reply on HN