Unless you’re marooned on a deserted island, chances
are you use icons daily. They adorn computers, cell
phones and miscellaneous kiosks everywhere. They
are those small, clever designs you click on or touch,
and voilà, you’re where you want to go.
The professionals featured here—Yellow Icon
Studio, TurboMilk, Felix Sockwell—excel at creating
icons and offer insight into their craft. The fundamentals
of quality icon design seem to fit nicely into
three categories: people, process and problem solving.
PEOPLE
Yellow Icon Studio (Brazil)
One element designers seem to agree upon for all creative
work: You must consider the audience throughout
the design process. As cold as technology can feel
to some, you can turn it into something warm when
you make it all about the human experience.
“I love my job. I love the colors, shapes and,
more than anything, I love the way people feel and
see the world,” explains Everaldo Coelho, CEO
and chief creative director of Yellow Icon Studio.
“Actually, icons are just a part of the work—certainly
the most visible. What we do is design focused on
people and not the object. Put together humanism,
psychology, semiotics and design, and you have
‘interactive design.’”
Yellow Icon’s core business is interface design
and iconography, but the studio also works in
graphic design, web design, illustration, animation
and other disciplines. Its client list includes Apple,
AT&T, Siemens, AOL and Google, to name a few. If you’re new to icon design, don’t feel you
have to be an expert before you dive into an icon
project. “My first experiment with icons was not
sophisticated—I was only attempting to replace the
Windows yellow folder,” quips Coelho.
You can find excellent advice on icon design at
the firm’s website—here, again, it’s all about the audience.
Says Coelho, “Our creation process is planned
to put user needs in first place, coordinating constant
studies, updates and resources. As a result, our created
icons have been largely known as references for
style, functionality, and look and feel. Great digital
design is rooted in usability—understanding the user,
who he is and what he needs and expects from a particular
interface.”
Creative resources Coelho recommends include
the icon designers at The Iconfactory (www.iconfactory.com), Iconic Design Ltd. (http://iconaholic.com), Bartelme Design (www.bartelme.at), Louie
Mantia (http://louismantia.com), the illustrations of
Ron Chan (www.ronchan.com) and Jonathan Ive,
senior vice president of Industrial Design at Apple.
Coelho invites everyone to see more of the firm’s
work at www.yellowicon.com, or go to http://twitter.com/everaldocoelho.
Of course, Coelho’s greatest allies are the
designers at Yellow Icon: “The guys who work with
me at Yellow Icon are fantastic—I learn from them
every day,” he adds. “They help me improve as a
professional and as a person.”
PROCESS
Turbomilk (Russia)
The folks at Turbomilk—Yegor Gilyov, Denis
Kortunov and Dmitri Joukov, all partners and
designers at the firm—don’t take icon design lightly.
They offer a blog on their website, www.turbomilk.com, that posts several tutorials on creating icons
and other design topics, which have been well
received by designers all over the world. They’ve
been dedicated to creating icons and visual design
since 2002, and their devotion to the medium shows
in the accolades they’ve garnered.
“I was always attracted to minor forms,” Gilyov
explains. “As a child, I used to make small models
of ships. Gigantomania is not for me, so to speak.”
Kortunov sort of fell into design work: “I was an ordinary designer at a company that produced internet
stores. Once, they needed a lot of icons, and they
made me draw them.”
The group says icon design is about gaining
experience through actual work and paying attention
to the important details that are crucial to
creating icons. “Somebody once described icon
design as ‘geek bonsai,’” notes Kortunov. “I think
this is a very accurate definition. The design has its
rules and laws—you need to spend time to really
get involved in this business. [After that], the sky’s
the limit.”
Kortunov reaches aspiring icon designers
worldwide through his firm’s tutorials and webcasts.
(See sidebar “10 Mistakes in Icon Design” from
TurboMilk’s Denis Kortunov.) Like
Coelho, the group also counts Iconfactory as experts
in the field, as well as Stefan Dziallas of iconwerk
(www.iconwerk.de).
PROBLEM SOLVING
Felix Sockwell (New Jersey, U.S.)
Felix Sockwell (www.felixsockwell.com) has been
creating icons since college. “Icons play a significant role in building a cohesive brand. My senior
year, I was tasked with a flyer for the theater
department at the University of North Texas. I
changed the flyer into a poster and developed individual
icons for each venue, as well as buttons for
all the show times.”
This foray into the world of icon design was an
overwhelming success—ticket sales skyrocketed by
300 percent. He was touched when, at a pizza joint
later that year, a waitress approached him and said,
“My parents were able to see my performance in a
packed house. I just want to thank you. You, more
than anyone, made that happen for me.”
“We as designers rarely get to feel that kind of
job satisfaction,” Sockwell explains. “I mean, I can
change lives—I’ve seen it happen. All you have to do
is try to solve problems with honest, hard work.”
Make no mistake about it—success doesn’t often
come without the inevitable failures. When asked
about past projects that particularly stick out for
him, Sockwell says, “There are too many to name,
especially the failures.”
Like many creatives, Sockwell implements a solution-based approach to his design work. “Icon
design or GUI [graphical user interface] is just problem
solving, really,” he says. “You give me a group
of categories and I distill them into an ownable
formula—hopefully one that can’t be easily copied
by that particular company’s competition. I have a
mantra: If it’s good and can be copied, it will be; but
if it’s great, it can’t be.”
He notes the most difficult aspect of creating
icons is “Agencies sell, or promise clients they’ll
deliver on a certain style of mine. After we’re done,
it almost always looks different. That’s because we’re
doing it right. Every problem is different, and every
solution should be tailored to those specific needs—not cookie-cutter, preconceived style notions.”
Sockwell’s design heroes include his collaborating
partner Thomas Fuchs and illustrator Christoph
Niemann. “I’ve worked with some of the best designers
around—Sagmeister, Niemann, Sahre, Bierut, you
name ’em—but Fuchs is always my best partner in
graphic design crimes. We compete and try to outdo
each other, and it always shows in the final product.”
FIND YOUR OWN PERSPECTIVE
Our experts recommend you begin any successful
icon creation on paper. Doodle out your ideas and
show them to friends and coworkers—see what
stands out the most. Then really get started. “If you
need to draw several icons, you need to think over
images for the whole set of icons before proceeding
with illustrating activities,” says TurboMilk’s Gilyov
in an article by Sean Hodge, “7 Principles of Effective
Icon Design,” found at PSDTUTS: Spoonfed
Photoshop (http://psdtuts.com). Be sure the icon has
its own personality, but remember to approach the
project holistically, as no icon is an island.
