What to ask your agency about iconography

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. If you are briefing an agency or a freelancer on iconography, these questions are worth asking early.

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Questions worth asking

• Who will actually do this work, and have they done it before?
• How will we know afterwards whether it worked?
• What happens if it needs changing in a year?
• What are you assuming that we have not confirmed?

What a good answer sounds like

Icons without labels are guessed wrong more often than teams assume. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

Decorative icons should be hidden from screen readers. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The short version

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.