Iconic icons: Celebrating design’s nifty little helpers
The power of iconography in our everyday lives
Hail to the icons! Those fickle, intricate little acolytes we all know and love. We glance at, click on, and tap away at icons all day long, but how much thought do we give to these unsung heroes of visual design?
Icons serve an important purpose— to communicate information in a manner that is clear and accessible. They aim to convey meaning through metaphor, providing information that may be essential to one’s experience.
In this blog post I pay homage to our iconic friends, extolling the vital role they play in our lives. I’ll explore their history, examine modern design applications, and offer a glimpse ahead at what may be in store for iconography in the future.
Icon’t wait to get started.
The Dawn of the Icon
Icons have been with us for millennia. We can date their origins all the way back to archeological symbols and ancient hieroglyphs. But unlike today’s icons, these early ancestors were more complex, used as writing tools to express entire languages.
To understand the rise of modern icons, we must jump ahead a few thousand years to the Information Age.
In the late 20th century, when phones were like bricks and apple was just a crunchy fruit that grew on trees, iconography was beginning to make a name for itself. Before then, the term “icon” was a relic reserved for religious paintings and Elvis Presley.
Enter the 1980s and the era of the first graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Xerox PARC introduced us to the original desktop icons in the Xerox Star system. Sparse, clunky, and pixelated, these earliest icons were like caveman drawings compared to today’s sleek, streamlined versions.
From Skeuomorphism to Flat Design
By the time the 2000s rolled around, icons had evolved. At this point, they were everywhere: on your computer, your flip phone, your digital camera, even your shiny new iPod Nano.
This was the age of Skeuomorphic design — the discipline of making icons look like a miniature version of their real-world counterparts. Remember navigating a Windows OS back in the day? Skeuomorphism was on full display.
2012 heralded a turning point for iconography. Pioneered by Microsoft and soon followed by Apple, Google and the rest, tech companies began a paradigm shift away from Skeuomorphic icons and towards Flat design. This modern approach favored two-dimensional, minimalist interfaces, reducing visual clutter to convey purpose and meaning more clearly.
To this day, Flat design is the clear preference for iconography across digital UI. This trend is supported by the UX principles of Occam’s Razor and Minimalism — less is more, and the simpler, the better.
Big Things Come in Small Packages
While icons may look basic, never underestimate their power and complexity! Icons are chock full of metaphors, meaning, and methodical design choices.
For example, take the icon for Email — a simple envelope. Do envelopes and emails have anything in common? Technically, no. But that icon provides a nostalgic nod to a time when humanity wrote letters by hand, licked them shut, and shamelessly tried to remember which corner to stick the postage stamp (okay, maybe that’s just me).
Today, icons are ubiquitous in product design, transcending digital interfaces to span just about every facet of our lives. Assembling some IKEA furniture for your new apartment? Those helpful diagrams you see in the instruction manual are icons.
Here’s a game. Next time you’re taking a train or bus, try counting the number of icons around you. My guess is you’ll lose track fairly quickly — they’re all over the place!
It’s no surprise that icons are employed so heavily in public transportation. They convey information much more efficiently than words or announcements, making them the perfect tools to enhance your commuting experience.
In the world of digital products, icons have become the backbone of UI, making our interfaces more intuitive and user-friendly. The hamburger menu (those three horizontal lines you click on for more options, not for lunch) and the magnifying glass (for search, not for science projects) are staples in our everyday lives.
The Future of Icons
So what’s next for our tiny little helpers? In the grand scheme of things, iconography is still in its infancy. And you can bet it will continue to evolve dramatically as technology advances.
One exciting space where icons will play a vital role is spatial computing. With Apple’s announcement of the Vision Pro just a week ago, it is clear we’re on the brink of a new age in digital product design. Icons will be on the frontlines in this shift from screen to spatial, diligently doing their jobs to provide clarity and convey meaning in this rapidly evolving design landscape.
A change we’re likely to see in the not-so-distant future is the return to Skeuomorphism in app iconography. This full-circle transposition may occur as designers seek to make icons look more realistic and 3-dimensional to fit the physical spaces around us.
In Apple’s recently released Design for spatial user interfaces, they discuss using specular highlights and shadows to make apps expand when a user engages with them. This means designing icons with multiple layers, utilizing a parallax effect for more depth and visual complexity.
The application of layers and shadows in spatial iconography represents an interesting full-circle reversion to previous skeuomorphic styles that have been considered “dead” for many years, suggesting that nothing is off the table when it comes to the future of interface design.
Iconography Essentials
It is clear that icons carry untold power. But power can yield both positive or negative outcomes. When used incorrectly, iconography may ruin a design.
While it is impossible to cover all the do’s and don’ts in this vast field with one blog post, I will provide my top considerations when using icons in design. You can call these my 3 C’s of Iconography (it even rhymes):
- Clarity: Icons must be clear and visually concise. No matter what they are, they must be easily distinguishable and recognizable for any viewer. Chances are, if you’re being overly creative with icons you’re doing it wrong.
- Consistency: Keep your icons consistent! Make sure all icons are styled the same way (I’m talking about color, size, line thickness, etc.) and that they look cohesive throughout your design. Not only is this more clean and professional, but it helps the user identify them and navigate the product.
- Conservation: Use icons only when you need to! Too many icons can lead to a busy, cramped, and challenging user experience. Remember, icons are a powerful resource and should be used judiciously!
An Iconic Conclusion
There you have it, the whirlwind tour of iconography’s journey from rock and roll stars to a universal design language. And while icons may be small and silent, it’s clear that their impact in our lives rings louder than words.
So if you ever feel lost in the realm of technology, remember: there’s always an icon to lend you a helping hand!
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