
Icons
“Icons!” are a recurring topic of discussion. Icons are added to make a design more humane. While the inner → Soup Nazi would like to dismiss them as a popular form of → Barcelona and categorically replace them with text, doing so results in cold design that communicates badly. Designing icons is one of the hardest disciplines. It requires a systematic approach with maximum attention to detail, form, language and context. Icons are a form of → Lace that at a certain point we seem to not be able to do without. Good icons are as few icons as needed but not less.


iA creates digital products. We run small design studios in Tokyo, Berlin, and Zurich that serve great clients around the globe. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive brief summaries of our articles and interviews.