Since we are on topic, anybody has a suggestion for an icon that represents body fat without representing an overweighted person?
Principles of Icon Design
11–20 of 60 posts
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#12If I could lodge a complaint to all the UI designers: please stop making all the icons look the same in order for them to have the same "style." If I'm looking at a grid of essentially identical white-on-black pictograms with overlapping forms composed entirely of outlines with no variation in thickness or stroke, then you might as well just use actual words at that point.
Seconded. Most recently I saw they'd done this to Blender (2.8) but it's happening everywhere.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#13Since we are on topic, anybody has a suggestion for an icon that represents body fat without representing an overweighted person?
You can use a icon just to rappresent fat (like this one https://www.flaticon.com/premium-icon/fat_1951542) and put it next to a person like a emblem in a similar way to this:
https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/2740474/personal_protection...
hope i did convey the idea.
edit: You should probably use a icon like this one https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/830113/character_figure_man... for the person instead the one i linked, since showing only the head instead of the entire body is not very clear (i used that one only for explain the emblem idea)
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#14If I could lodge a complaint to all the UI designers: please stop making all the icons look the same in order for them to have the same "style." If I'm looking at a grid of essentially identical white-on-black pictograms with overlapping forms composed entirely of outlines with no variation in thickness or stroke, then you might as well just use actual words at that point.
In icon sets, variations in stroke thickness is a bad idea, without changing the context. People who can't evaluate design issues would simply categorise the product as "something's off here", or "I don't trust this". Your iconography has an impact at a deeper level.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#15If I could lodge a complaint to all the UI designers: please stop making all the icons look the same in order for them to have the same "style." If I'm looking at a grid of essentially identical white-on-black pictograms with overlapping forms composed entirely of outlines with no variation in thickness or stroke, then you might as well just use actual words at that point.
As a general rule icons take up less horizontal space than actual words describing what they do, which is why designers prefer to use icons.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#16Since we are on topic, anybody has a suggestion for an icon that represents body fat without representing an overweighted person?
You can use a icon just to rappresent fat (like this one https://www.flaticon.com/premium-icon/fat_1951542 ) and put it next to a person like a emblem in a similar way to this: https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/2740474/personal_protection... hope i did convey the idea. edit: You should probably use a icon like this one https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/830113/character_figure_man... for the person instead the one i lin…
The problem of using words in an icon is that it only means anything for the people who speak that language.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#17In the 10+ years I've been running a UI/UX design firm for software companies, I've come to the conclusion that icon design, is not very different from logo design and brand design. A Nike swish logo by itself, without context of the brand we have with it today, is just a random piece of graphic. The pixels itself are worth practically nothing. But because when we see the Nike logo, we feel something (Athleticism, mo…
Thanks for your insight, you should write articles/blogposts about that aspect of UI/UX business that rarely talked about unfortunately. Icon relevancy is contextual, that's an important concept.
To go further with the idea of context, a square on its own is meaningless, a square next to a circle and a triangle means stop, next to play and record.
And it's also these relationships that will tell the user what to click on.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#18I really think that icons should be judiciously used, in the event of notification of a serious type. An alert, a warning or an immediate attention to a hazard. Icons have a cognitive overhead of learning it - if we design icons of different styles and artistic expression, they lose their efficiency in cognitive detection. An interface with lots of icons without text (For e.g. SolidWorks, 3DS MAX, Houdini) requires p…
> PS - Btw, skeumorphic design is back, watch out for it in the next decade.
I think it was seen as cool for some people to talk negatively about skeuo, because it brought clicks. Most of these blogposts criticizing skeuomorphism never understood what it was about at first place, and it has nothing to do with how much bevel/emboss or drop shadow a UI has. Realword users like skeumorphism because they want some familiar UI, not some abstract/minimal thing that looks good only in Dribbble...
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#19In the 10+ years I've been running a UI/UX design firm for software companies, I've come to the conclusion that icon design, is not very different from logo design and brand design. A Nike swish logo by itself, without context of the brand we have with it today, is just a random piece of graphic. The pixels itself are worth practically nothing. But because when we see the Nike logo, we feel something (Athleticism, mo…
The play button points at the direction the tape will roll in your cassette player. It had a very practical function once upon a time.
Re: Principles of Icon Design
#20If I could lodge a complaint to all the UI designers: please stop making all the icons look the same in order for them to have the same "style." If I'm looking at a grid of essentially identical white-on-black pictograms with overlapping forms composed entirely of outlines with no variation in thickness or stroke, then you might as well just use actual words at that point.
I miss recognizable colors, and clear silhouettes.
Too many icons now are monochrome squiggles and blobs on a (rounded) rectangle silhouette. About as horrible as it can get.