icons

ago · 2 minutes read

The significance of icons in graphic user interfaces (GUIs) and user experience (UX)

In the realm of digital design, icons play a vital role in enhancing the user experience of websites, web apps, and mobile apps. They are small visual representations that communicate meaning, simplify navigation, and add aesthetic appeal. Icons have become an integral part of modern interfaces, and their careful selection and implementation contribute to the overall usability and engagement of digital products. One prominent source of high-quality icons can be Picons.me, which offers a diverse range of icons to elevate user experiences.

Enhancing Visual Communication
Icons serve as a powerful visual language that transcends linguistic barriers. They allow designers to communicate ideas and concepts quickly and efficiently. By utilizing universally recognized symbols, icons aid in conveying information at a glance. Users can instantly understand the purpose and functionality associated with an icon, leading to a smoother and more intuitive user experience.

Picons is an extensive collection of icons, covering various categories such as technology, business, finance, and more. With their well-crafted and visually appealing icons, we provide designers with the tools to effectively communicate ideas, making interactions more intuitive and engaging.

Streamlining Navigation and Usability
Icons act as visual signposts, guiding users through interfaces and simplifying complex interactions. By representing actions, features, and functionalities through icons, designers reduce cognitive load and create a more user-friendly experience. Well-designed icons can replace lengthy text labels, conserving valuable screen space and promoting a cleaner, streamlined interface.

Our icon library offers a wide selection of icons suitable for different purposes. Whether it’s a mobile app, website, or web app, designers can find icons that align with their design aesthetics and enhance the usability of their digital products. All the icons are designed with clarity and simplicity in mind, ensuring seamless navigation and efficient user interactions.

Aesthetics and Brand Consistency
Icons play a significant role in defining the visual identity of a digital product. They contribute to the overall aesthetics and brand consistency, making an interface visually appealing and recognizable. Consistent iconography across a website, web app, or mobile app creates a cohesive and memorable user experience, reinforcing the brand’s image in the user’s mind.

We have a wide range of customizable icons, allowing designers to match the iconography with their brand’s style and personality. By incorporating icons into their designs, designers can achieve a cohesive visual language that aligns with their brand guidelines, enhancing recognition and fostering a stronger connection with users.

Icons are an essential element of graphic user interfaces, playing a crucial role in enhancing user experiences. Their ability to convey meaning, streamline navigation, and contribute to aesthetics and brand consistency makes them indispensable in modern design practices. Picons stands out as a valuable resource, providing designers with a diverse selection of high-quality icons to elevate their designs. By leveraging the power of icons, designers can create intuitive, visually appealing interfaces that leave a lasting impression on users.

ago · 3 minutes read

The New Etihad Airways Icon System by Picons

Beside crafting new stock icons and custom add-on icons compatible to existing Picons icon collections, such as Basic & Thin, I also design individual icon systems adapting to the client’s brand.

Few years ago, I had the opportunity to create a brand-new icon system for Etihad Airways. For those not familiar with, Etihad Airways is the national airline of the United Arab Emirates with its home in Abu Dhabi.

This was a great challenge and pleasure for me, not just because I was tasked to design 200+ custom icons, but because I could craft a unique icon system for a global audience. Designing airline/airport icons might just be the dream of every (icon) designer out there.

At the end, and over a period of 3 years, we did create more than 400 icons.

I. Feeling the Brand

Designing an individual icon system starts with learning the client’s brief and brand guidelines. The icons, as a part of the corporate identity, play an important role in presenting a consistent image of a powerful and successful brand.

A central role in Etihad’s identity plays the Facets of Abu Dhabi.

The Facet exists in the Etihad wordmark and is drawn from the traditional Islamic design and modern Arabian architecture producing an effect that is precise and aesthetically pleasing. This pattern is found to appear consistently across our home Abu Dhabi as an architectural feature and design pattern, thus subtly adding to a seamless experience.

From the Etihad Brand Guidelines, 2016

II. Exploring the Icon Style

We tried 3 different design approaches, to figure out which one would work the best: outline, glyph and a combination of both.

Style A: Thin outline icon style (consistent stroke weight, round & miter joins combo)
Style B: Glyph icon style with triangular “negative space”
Style C: Outlines (2 stroke weights) + filled shapes combo

The client chose to go on with outlines. The final icon style has adopted the combination of rounded and sharp corners. All icons share the line strength of 1 pixel. And there is the golden facet.

The Facet
When creating an individual icon system for a brand, you just need to implement something unique into them. Icons need to be obvious, that’s why great icons are using well-known metaphors. Although when speaking of the icon style, we don’t want icons to look too generic or special, just for the sake of being special. That’s where the Facet plays an important role. 

Final icon style

Each icon in the system includes a little golden Facet. It is connecting the icons to the brand and let the icons stand out from your everyday stock icons.

III. Defining an Icon System

The Construction
On of the first tasks, after figuring out the icon style, is defining a grid. It is important that the icons sit on the pixel so they are always crisp and sharp (pixel-perfect).

Although pixel-perfect plays no role in print and when used on retina displays, it’s still considered as the best practice for crafting large icon systems.

IV. Showcases

Disclaimer: Images courtesy of Etihad Airways. 

ago · 1 minute read

New: Picons Thin 2 – an update to the most popular outline icon set

As already mentioned in the previous post, this update took us more than 2 years. And now it’s ready.

Picons Thin 2 is an extension to the original Picons Thin outline icon set with 663 new icons, sorted into 30 categories: Charts & Analytics, Business, Money & Finance 2, eCommerce, Delivery, Badges, Maps & Navigation 2, Movies 2, Media Controls, Essentials 2, Devices, Architecture & Construction, Print & Papers, School & Learning, Relationship, Pregnancy & Baby, Leisure & Fun 2, Winter Holidays, Food & Cooking 2, Home & Living 2, Wellness & Beauty, SEO & Marketing, Users & People 2, Communication & Messaging 2, Hierarchy, Files & Documents 2, Network & Sharing 2, GUI elements 2, Office, Law Enforcement, and Touch Gestures 2.

Click here for a full icon set preview

The icon set comes with all the usual vector source files (AI, EPS and PDF), a Sketch file, a Photoshop file (PSD) with icons as Custom Shapes, a special CSH file for importing icons into your Custom Shape toolbar, and each icon as transparent a PNG (available in 6 different sizes: 24, 48, 72, 96, 120 and 144 pixels). We are also including an Iconjar archive, SVG files so you can create your own individual icon font, and EMF files to be used in Microsoft Office.

Download Picons Thin 2

ago · 2 minutes read

Soon: Picons Thin 2 extension with 660+ brand new icons

It’s been more than 3 years, since we released the first Picons Thin icon set. The characteristics of the icons were simple – a coherent outline icon set, build on a 24-pixel grid and fully compatible with Apple’s new icon design guidelines for iOS.

Obviously the icons weren’t only useful for iOS. The new icon trend took over and outline icons became a standard in UI design for the past years. Not surprisingly, Picons Thin has been our best-selling icon set, especially after the immense update in 2015, when we redesigned the complete set and extended it with 500+ new icons.

Now it’s time to announce Picons Thin 2.

For the past 2 years, we have been working hard on a major extension to Picons Thin. We are very lucky to have a great community of designers giving us a lot of feedback and request for new icons. We were listening to your suggestions and made 660+ new icons, sorted into 30 categories.

The themes we cover are: Charts & Analytics, Business, Money & Finance 2, eCommerce, Delivery, Badges, Maps & Navigation 2, Movies 2, Media Controls, Essentials 2, Devices, Architecture & Construction, Print & Papers, School & Learning, Relationship, Pregnancy & Baby, Leisure & Fun 2, Winter Holidays, Food & Cooking 2, Home & Living 2, Wellness & Beauty, SEO & Marketing, Users & People 2, Communication & Messaging 2, Hierarchy, Files & Documents 2, Network & Sharing 2, GUI elements 2, Office, Law Enforcement, and Touch Gestures 2.

Here is a sneak & peek of just few icons:

Considering the immense amount of work put into the extension, we’re delivering it as a new stand-alone icon set – part 2. As always, buyers of Picons Thin will get a very special upgrade option for a significantly reduced price.

Right now, we’re making the “last mile” and preparing all the exports. The icon set will come with all the usual vector source files (AI, EPS and PDF), a Sketch file, a Photoshop file (PSD) with icons as Custom Shapes, a special CSH file for importing icons into your Custom Shape toolbar, and each icon as transparent a PNG (available in 6 different sizes: 24, 48, 72, 96, 120 and 144 pixels). We are also including an Iconjar archive, SVG files so you can create your own individual icon font, and EMF files to be used in Microsoft Office.

If you are already a customer of Picons (any icon set) you will be automatically notified by email on the release day. For others, you are welcome to subscribe to our newsletter.

Stay tuned!

ago · 1 minute read

New Colorful Icons for Your Next Project

We have been quiet for some time but we have been working on amazing new icons all the time. And this is our first (but not last) release after some time.

Picons BasiColor - Color icons

BasiColor is a brand new, colorful, trendy & minimalistic icon set. Each icon is designed to precision on a grid, which ensures 100% consistency. Perfect for Websites, Apps, iOS and Android.

The 274 icons are organized into categories (see the full preview).

The perfect icons
100% scalable, high-quality icons, each created with great passion and expertise, to meet the highest design standards for your next project.

Customizable
We use super trendy and balanced colors. And you can easily change the color to fully fit your UI or brand guidelines.

Easy to search for
With Iconjar all your Picons icon sets will be organized by category, tagged, and the right icon is always at your fingertips.

 

What’s included in the icon set?

File types included in the icon set

  • .AI, .EPS, .PDF vector files
  • .PSD Adobe Photoshop file with icons as vector Smart Objects
  • .Sketch file
  • .PNG‘s: 24px, 48px, 72px, 96px, 120px, 144px
  • .SVG files for using on websites or making your custom web font
  • .EMF Windows Enhanced Metafiles for Microsoft Office (how to use them?)
  • .iconjar Searchable Iconjar archive (read more)

 

Special offer for blog readers

We are giving you a coupon code to get 15% off the regular price ($30). You can get the new Picons BasiColor for only $25.50 (coupon code: “15forbloggers”).

Get the icons now (-15% discount activated)