GRAPHIC ICONS: Clarify Your Content with Less

Can you imagine living in a world with thousands of people who speak over 7,000 languages being navigated through airports, hospitals, train stations, and other enormous facilities without graphic icons? Graphic icon design has been used for over 40,000 years, dating back to Egyptian hieroglyphs and other ancient alphabets.

It’s simply a fact that images communicate faster than words both on their own and when included in the content. Otto Neurath, German native and inventor of the Isotype (picture language) method of pictorial statistics, summed it up perfectly when he said: “Words divide, images unite.” Today’s graphic designers continue to embrace this knowledge when transforming a complex directive into an easy-to-read-and-remember design solution.

Businesses rely on graphic icons to quickly convey information in their logo designs, branding materials, training manuals, infographics, animations, and all kinds of presentations for both internal and external communications. When creating a graphic icon, its success depends upon being delivered consistently across every platform. Graphic designers also want to have a thorough knowledge of symbols that represent various organizations or meanings that would distract from their intended message or offend the people who understand other meanings.

Before you begin your design, you want to step back and look at the big picture. Study the content provided or the briefing for the icon’s purpose so you can better understand how the new icon design can be implemented in the context of the messaging. This will help you plan ahead and decide if it needs to be accompanied by additional icons or even a family of icons. Once you know or conceptualize the graphic icon’s purpose or call-to-action, you can look at the hard and soft demographics of the audience the icon will be seen by so you get them and have a better feeling about what style would grab their attention. It also pays to explore competitive graphic icons so you don’t look like them. 

Only then does the fun begin with an exploration of fonts, colors, and styles, and reviewing existing brand manuals or creating them if rebranding. Will the icon be best received as simple line art or a more expressive illustration? Proceed with various shapes within shapes and continue to execute the designs until they clearly say what you need them to say with visual distinctiveness and precision.

At BP Designs (BPD), our clients rely on us to create and deliver visual acuity with fast turnaround especially when their in-house designers have more than they can handle. With over a decade of graphic design experience and multiple decades of combined designers’ advertising agency and corporate communications experience, BPD delivers far more than graphic icons. Let us show you how we can turn your big messages into exceptional solutions in small packages that say it all.