Friday, July 18, 2008

10 mistakes in icon design

Here goes a handy checklist that helps fight typical mistakes in icon design. The author keeps things simple and gives nice illustrations to support his point. Just what an amateur designer like me would need next time when the need for drawing a simple custom icon arises. :-)

Summary:

  1. Insufficient differentiation between icons.
  2. Too many elements in one icon.
  3. Unnecessary elements.
  4. Lack of unity of style within a set of icons.
  5. Unnecessary perspective and shadows in small icons.
  6. Overly original metaphors.
  7. National or social characteristics not being taken into account.
  8. Images of real interface elements in icons.
  9. Text inside icons.
  10. Outside the pixel framework.

P.S. Thanks to Desh for sharing the link.

2 comments:

Ushkind said...

=)
вот ссылка, с которой спрыгнуто-пеерпрыгнуто и допрыгнуто и так далее до разной интересной информации=)
http://www.malenehald.dk/blog/

Boris said...

Yeah, great article, expecially for UI design rookies ;).

And more, you can see how «if-you-build-it-they-come» principle works - Jakob Nielsen himself (pbuh!) came upon to put his comment in response to finely elaborated post.