In China, the color red can signify good fortune whereas, in many Western countries, it is used to denote danger.īy now, I hope we have established that successful web icons should meet one or both of the following two criteria: One should be wary that what these things say has a strong cultural dimension. Although semiology, like linguistics, does cover language, there are many more things on a website that “say” something without words, such as colors, typefaces and the shapes that we call icons. Whenever you consider a part of your design work from the perspective of what it signifies - what it is saying to your audience or what concepts it is recalling for them - you are considering your design as a semiotician. Semiology, in the broadest sense, is the study of sign systems, how we contribute to their formation and maintenance, and the impact they have on our understanding of the world within and without us. In order to do this, we must consider the icon’s role as part of semiology. Ultimately, you should go away with a process for making design elements that extends far beyond the manufacture of simple icons.īefore we continue, something should be said about what exactly we are trying to achieve by using icons in our designs in the first place, and what makes one icon more successful than the next. How about that? You will not need to rely on any of the esoteric knowledge required to make successful alphanumeric typefaces just an eye for designing things that may appear very, very small.

In this article, I’m going to examine the science behind making successful UI icons before teaching you how to make your own embeddable icon font.įrom designing the individual icons to converting them for embedding, and even licensing them for distribution, we shall be using only free software and online services.

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