Realistic but Strange vs. Simple but Familiar

Icons are very casual but also complex images that we encounter daily; they are quick to look at but sometimes too abstract to understand. A good “international” icon should be “simple, meaningful, and memorable” as have said by Susan Kare during her talk in 2014. It was interesting to hear about her discussion on realistic but strange vs. simple but familiar designs of icon and the different feelings we get when we see intricate drawing of a smiling person (we see a different person) vs. smiling cartoon face (we see ourselves). After listening to her talk, I realized that I use certain emojis to show others my feelings/reactions/thoughts at the moment in a single picture-form.

Like my use of emojis, I believe that an icon is designed in a way to represent its meaning clearly, meaningfully, and memorably in a simple square picture that could be interpreted quickly. Bad emojis definitely exist but there are always ways to identify them and improve them. To learn more about bad examples of icon, please click here. Otherwise, this website does an excellent job going over ways to design good icons.

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