We all know that icons are a great way to convey a message. But have you ever wondered what makes a great icon? A great icon is one that has the right amount of visual appeal and is easy to understand. This can be achieved through the use of different elements. Elements like color palettes, and effects that help give your icon its unique look. If you’re new to the world of icon design, let’s learn why icons are a great way to communicate information in an easy-to-understand manner.
This post is going to introduce vector icon design. Vector icon design is a type of icon used in different applications, such as desktop and mobile. Vector icons combine textures and colors to create unique designs. This makes them easier to read and attractive to the user. In this post, we will explore the different elements of vector icon design such as color and shape.
Elements in Vector Icon Design
One of the most critical aspects of a Free vector icon is its design. But before you start crafting your design, it’s important to understand the different elements that make up an icon. When creating your own visual representation of something, it’s important to consider:
- The purpose of the icon
- The typeface
- Color choice for each element
- Size and placement of each element in relation to other elements
- Whether it’s a vector or a point-and-click design (vector)
- Whether you’ll need to make any further adjustments given the display size of your icon
Let’s discuss various elements in Vector icons design:
1. Creativity
Excellent symbols are remembered and able to communicate. Using simple-to-understand visual metaphors—even visual clichés—in your design will be the fastest and most efficient approach to achieve that balance. After that, you can reinvent them in a way that stands out and is memorable.
For decades, the same concepts have been represented by hearts, gears, lightbulbs, skulls, crests, badges, puzzle pieces, and other typical icons. They may be simply and frequently imitated, so your audience will be able to comprehend them. But because of that, they’ll probably find them boring as well. Consider how you might play with your audience’s expectations while designing your icons by modifying straightforward, cliched shapes. It’s a simple method to remain communicative and differentiate yourself from the crowd.
2. Uniformity and consistency:
The creation of a “family of icons,” or a group of symbols that each represent a different subject, idea, or activity but are connected aesthetically and visually, is a common task for icon designers. Families of icons can be used to express a variety of brand activities or to organize presentations and website menus.
Each icon should be able to work independently while also maintaining consistency with the other symbols because icon families are appreciated for their aesthetic cohesion. You need enough similarity among the photos, despite their extreme differences, to convince your audience that they are connected.
3. Minimalism:
A design may gain pop and flavor from the proper touches. The saying “don’t sweat the small stuff” is especially appropriate when it comes to symbols. Your work may appear cramped, overblown, and unnecessarily intricate if you attempt to fit too many concepts into a single icon. Icons should be equally useful in small-format settings as they are in large-format ones. You should only provide the amount of information necessary to keep the attention of your audience and to make your argument; otherwise, you run the danger of losing readability.
4. Scalability:
An efficient icon should be able to impact the viewer regardless of how it is presented—whether it is extremely little or very large—without affecting the audience’s comprehension. Starting small is the secret to making sure that your designs will look good in every size. Your work will be readable whether it is a few pixels wide or sprawled across a large-format banner if you begin your technique by working with little designs. Just make sure your designs are vector-based, as this will save your icons from losing detail when they are resized.
5. Structure:
The fundamental shape of your icon is its form/structure. Even intricate representational patterns ought to be decomposable into simple squares, circles, ellipses, triangles, and other geometric shapes. These foundational elements make sure that the design has a strong base.
Start by drawing simple shapes for your icon, then add detail as you go. However, keep in mind that some forms elicit psychological reactions, and if you pick a shape without taking into account its connotations, your symbol may send the incorrect message.
A sense of stability, strength, and solidity is conveyed to the audience by rectangles and squares. They can symbolize grids, tables, building blocks, and other structures while also conveying dependability, loyalty, safety, and formality.
It has been said that circles, which are frequently observed in nature, convey wholeness, health, vigor, community, relationships, eternity, and repeating movement.
Triangles can indicate a variety of ideas, including steadiness, strength, science, peaks or summits, and motion or momentum. Audiences may be directed toward a particular object by the triangle’s tip, which gives that object an added sense of significance.
6. Clarity:
Designs need to be aesthetically pleasing and flawlessly consistent because icons need to be comprehended clearly even at extremely small scales. A fantastic idea might appear unfinished and unreliable even with the slightest flaws in angles, line weight, or edges.
You should always utilize an icon design grid to map out your shapes and keep your forms constant, regardless of whether you start with hand-drawn sketches or create them in Adobe Illustrator. By arranging your shapes and lines in a balanced and attractive way, gridding assists you in creating a perfect appearance. Grids generally come in four different flavors:
- With no visual clutter, dot grids offer structure.
- Perpendicular lines intersecting at 90-degree angles are possible to work with in square grids.
- Designers can easily simplify practically any geometric form by using square grids with diagonal lines.
- Grids with a thirty-degree angle contain triangles and hexagons that can give the artwork a three-dimensional appearance.
7. Use of Colors:
Your audience’s emotional state can be greatly influenced by color. For instance, the colors red and black are infamous for being threatening, especially when used together. Although in other contexts crimson and black can also signify passion or love, and blood, death, anger, and poison, respectively, red and black can also denote blood, death, wrath, and poison. Warmer, lighter hues like pinks, oranges, and yellow may evoke happy emotions like inventiveness, enthusiasm, and excitement from childhood. Greens, purples, and blues, on the other hand, might evoke associations with the natural world as well as a sense of calm, peace, health, and sophistication.
Let’s end the discussion:
A great icon is one that has the right amount of visual appeal and is easy to understand. Vector icon design is a type of icon used in different applications, such as desktop and mobile. Vector icons combine textures and colors to create unique designs. This makes them easier to read and attractive to the user. I hope you will get some information about the elements of vector icons, will meet you in the next blog until then try and use free vector icons.
