How to get iconography right
The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. The short answer to iconography is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
Why it matters
Icons without labels are guessed wrong more often than teams assume. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- One icon set keeps stroke weight and corner radius consistent
- Decorative icons should be hidden from screen readers
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Decorative icons should be hidden from screen readers. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
Where to go from here
How to tell if yours is fine
Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. 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
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.