Are you guilty of web-design? I see it in your eyes! Otherwise what are you doing on a web-site about icons? Huh?
A disarming deduction, isn’t it?
So. I am stating it with the full responsibility: web-site icons are a design temptation, and using them means displaying cowardice. But a bigger sin is using icons incorrectly. For these tricks you may be committed to the flames. Well, yes…But first there will be a little sermon.
During the lifetime of pictograms in general and of icons in a user’s interface in particular, several rules were formed, and violating them is considered to be evil. Thus, we can say that any pictogram, if you use it incorrectly, turns from just a symbol into the evil symbol. There was a pictogram, which became a pentagram. If before they commited people to flames for correct pentagrams, not it is time to do it for incorrect pictograms. Severe, but fair.
However, following several simple rules will save you from a fast and fair carnage.
So, the first and the main dogma: do not puzzle a user of yours.
What does it mean? It means that a user should not waste his precious time trying to guess what is depicted there. Ideally, the meaning of a pictogram must be captured at once and by any person regardless of where he lives, what languages he speaks and what gods he worships.
The second dogma: do not decorate a site of yours with an icon, but help a user of yours.
It becomes especially urgent in our Web 2.0 century, when there is a great temptation to stick in a “well-it-is-gorgeous” icon just because it is gorgeous, though it is absolutely different from the style and the meaning of your site. Remember about the flames, and probably your eagerness to place pictograms everywhere and without any reason will calm down.
And finally, the third dogma: many icons bring much grief.
Here it is absolutely clear: if a user is dazzled by millions of pictograms – welcome to the flames. Icons should help a user faster find the most important elements.
These are the simple rules.
www.icojoy.com | Krikanov Dmitry
