HCI VISTAS, VOLUME-III, 2007-2008
Beware of Style in Icon Design!
Dr. Dinesh Katre
Article INS-23./June 2007
The icons or baby faces used as part of user interface have now turned into a major aspect of product branding. With powerful computers, enhanced graphics capabilities, advanced tools for illustration, and professionals to advocate rich user experience, icon design has become more important and complex than ever before! Windows Vista has raised the standard of quality icons even higher. An interface design project forced me to think about 'style' in icon design. It raised some basic questions in my mind.
Stylish icons for product branding
Just a month ago, one of my teams got involved in an icon design assignment for a fairly complex telemedicine software product. It needed large number of icons to be created in just one-month duration. So less time! The product manager was keen on introducing stylized icons for unique branding 
of the product. Smart move! A designer from my team sketched wonderful icons with stylized shapes and forms. Visual semantics and comprehension of associated propositions (the messages) were discussed and various alternatives for each icon were evaluated. The style was approved. Basic guidelines were evolved collectively. Actual rendering activity began.
of the product. Smart move! A designer from my team sketched wonderful icons with stylized shapes and forms. Visual semantics and comprehension of associated propositions (the messages) were discussed and various alternatives for each icon were evaluated. The style was approved. Basic guidelines were evolved collectively. Actual rendering activity began.Short delivery schedule > Team effort > Inconsistency in the style of icons
The concepts to be depicted through icons were pretty complex too. We had to study the software features, requirements of users and developers within this time. Very short time was left 
for activities like conceptualization, sketching of alternatives, design, rendering, testing, fine tuning, sizing, converting to required formats 
.
for activities like conceptualization, sketching of alternatives, design, rendering, testing, fine tuning, sizing, converting to required formats . After a few days while reviewing the progress, it was noticed that icons were good but slightly different 
in terms of the style. After much handholding, discussions and redoing, the job was completed. I realized that the designers were capable of designing good icons, but it was tough to maintain the consistency of style. The broad style guidelines were not helping beyond a limit. It wasn't enough. Some more detailing was essential. Therefore I thought of working on the style attributes of icon design. The user interface design teams in other companies might have already faced such problems.
in terms of the style. After much handholding, discussions and redoing, the job was completed. I realized that the designers were capable of designing good icons, but it was tough to maintain the consistency of style. The broad style guidelines were not helping beyond a limit. It wasn't enough. Some more detailing was essential. Therefore I thought of working on the style attributes of icon design. The user interface design teams in other companies might have already faced such problems. Gestalt psychology (e.g. law of similarity) can explain how we perceive the style in icon design. Try out a small experiment described in figure 1.
Figure 1. One can observe different levels of realism, color tints and rendering styles in the icons shown above.
The lower box has many icons with different styles. Readers can try to identify
the icons that belong to respective groups (A or B) presented above.
Let us now try and find answers to the basic questions pertaining to style in icon design.
§ What is meant by style in icon design?
The style is perceived through a consistent pattern / similarity of visual attributes visible in a group of icons. You need a group of icons to
establish the style. As shown in figure 1, it is obvious that icon 1 belongs to group A and icon 5 belongs to group B.
The list of attributes presented below should enable the team of designers in observing and understanding the stylistic attributes of icons.
§ Which are the stylistic attributes of icons?
I could think of 30 different attributes and each one having many sub-opitions. More are possible. Looks pretty large in number 
. But
. But you can't close your eyes on them. The style atributes applicable in our icon design project are indicated as (2).
