Iconography: what to get right first

Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. If you only fix one thing about iconography this quarter, make it the first item below.

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Start here

Icons without labels are guessed wrong more often than teams assume. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Then this

One icon set keeps stroke weight and corner radius consistent. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Eventually

Decorative icons should be hidden from screen readers. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

How to tell if yours is fine

Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Three things worth confirming about iconography before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• One icon set keeps stroke weight and corner radius consistent — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.