Corporate Intranet

You want people to click on your product or application, and presenting them with an instantly-recognisable icon helps you win that battle. But there's a real art to designing icons - here's five tips to help you on your way.

Think about your audience

Before you start designing your icon set think about where it's going to be used. On the intranet for a small business where it will only be seen by a small group of employees? Or as part of a large company's global branding campaign? If it's the latter you need to be aware of cultural sensitivities. What may look quite clear to you may be viewed quite differently in another country. Cultural traditions and surroundings differ greatly from country to country. Microsoft's brightly-coloured squares or the iconic Apple logo for example, as well as being instantly recognisable, even in a small icon format, are safe images that are unlikely to cause offence or be misinterpreted by different cultures around the world. And if you use text in the icon, will it be understood correctly by someone in another country?

Size does matter

Whether you're working in Photoshop or Illustrator the instinct may be to make the icon scalable - design it at 512 pixels and then just scale it down. But this can lead to problems, as it may just not work when scaled down. It could look blurry, or if you've included text in the design this may not be readable. Or a picture may just look distorted. So make sure that each output size has its own optimized design. Always bear in mind that icons are inherently small images and so they need to be instantly recognisable, whilst at the same time stand out from the rest of the images a user will see on the screen.

Keep it simple

Packing too much into the design is an easy mistake to make. When it's that small people just won't see it. Think of the Apple, iTunes or Last.fm icons - all small, bright and clear. To be effective it has to be simple. The more you dress it up the less recognisable it may be. But keeping it simple is an art in itself and you may have to be strong-willed and focused to make sure you don't bend to pressure from external sources to fit lots of company branding in there.

Consistency is king

Icons very rarely work in isolation. They usually come as part of a set of images and branding that represents the company's ethos. So think about how it works as part of the bigger picture. Think about the little things, like ensuring that the perspective is the same in each image - are they all facing forwards, to the left or to the right? And don't forget lighting. The way you cast light, shadows and reflections needs to be consistent. When working with these sets of images neatness and precision is key.

It's time to be creative

You've got a 16 x 16 pixels space. What are you going to put into it? It's time to be creative and have a bit of fun. You haven't got the full space of a web page or billboard to fill, it's just a small area and the icon needs to be bright and instantly-recognisable, and if you can make it quirky enough to raise a smile then this will make it easy to remember. You don't want it to get lost in the crowd of icons that people face on their screens all day long.