Using Icons In Design – 3 Mistakes You Can Avoid

We use icons almost on all websites and apps. Whether it be for optimizing the design or enhancing the user experience, icons are vital. But whichever reason you may use it for, it’s very easy to end up making a mistake that, instead of optimizing your design, can give the opposite effect. And you find that out when you notice your icon not getting the results you intended. In this blog, we will discuss the top 3 mistakes that you need to avoid in your icon design.

Using the Wrong Size of Icons

This is one of the biggest blunders you can make in your icon designs. And it can happen in two ways! In one situation, scale your icon and resize to fit your criteria. In the second situation, your icon could be scaled too small and again resized to fit. In both these situations, you might think a high-quality icon won’t face this problem. But you’re wrong. Every icon, of every quality, faces the threat of pixelation if you go wrong with the scaling. Don’t even think of resizing as an option. Make sure your design is the right size from the start so you don’t have to face any troubles and end up compromising the quality of your work.

Trying too hard to be Unique

It’s always good to be unique, I’m not saying that it’s not. But how unique is too unique? When you’re designing an icon, it’s easy to get carried away with excitement and end up adding too many details that can hinder user experience instead of enhancing it. If your design has too much detail, it becomes complex for the user to understand. When the user can’t comprehend the meaning of the design, they won’t know what it’s meant for. Being minimal is essential for an icon to be properly understood.

Using Labels Before Icons

Icons are designed to tell users what the function of the said process is for which it is designed. If you’re using labels before the icons, you’re eliminating the entire significance of the icon and making it obsolete. Icons are forms of images made to make a user experience simpler. If you’re just adding a label before the user gets to look at its icon, then you’re reducing an icon’s purpose and it just becomes a pointless decoration in front of the label. The icon should always precede the written label so that the user can make sense of the design themselves before the label tells them what it’s all about.

These are the three common mistakes you need to avoid when designing your icons. Apart from this, beginners are often prone to making a lot of other errors in their icon designs, like poor color combinations, different sizes of every icon that don’t fit with each other, inconsistent design themes, etc. All of these things end up ruining the aesthetics of your design and make users feel weirded out for coming to your website or app. Hence, you need to properly research what you want to do with your designs and follow the right steps, size, and principles for designing your icons.