How to prepare an Icon Design Brief

Preparing an Icon Design Brief

Ok, so you know you need some new Icons for your project but if this is the first time you have put together a brief, it may not be completely obvious where to start. The following information should help you prepare a useful brief for any designer to quote upon, obviously we hope you choose Creative Freedom for you project but regardless this should be a very useful exercise.

If your time is limited or you are in a hurry, you can read our very short article on the minimum information we require for a Quick Icon Design Estimate.

Technical Requirements

Getting the technical specifications out the way at the outset can often narrow the styles available for the designer and help us to choose the right designer from our team. For instance if you require Icons for Print as well as a software application, we know we need to be able to reproduce them at higher resolutions or even in a scalable vector format.

  1. What environment will the icons be used in?
    Are they website graphics or used in a software suite? Do you require different states such as rollover and inactive, can your software create the different states automatically?
  2. If software, what file formats will it support?
    In most cases 32bit PNG files produce the best results but some software can't support it. ICO is another option but usually creates another step in production. BMP only supports 1bit (or on/off) transparency meaning curves and diagnonal shapes won't be smooth. Other development environments such as Microsoft Silverlight require files in the XAML vector format.
  3. What sizes do you require?
    Knowing the largest and smallest file dimensions from the outset is very important. Typically 16x16 pixel icons will always be designed and created as a seperate image to any larger sizes as they need to be much simpler in design to remain clear. At the other end of the scale, very large icons or those needed for print will need increased levels of detail to remain attractive. Adding a new size at either extreme after the project has started could add to the cost.
  4. Custom Design or Emulate an existing style?
    If you are developing a new website, you may want your icons to be completely unique to your brand, on the other hand if you are developing a software package, you may want to closely emulate an existing style to maintain a familiar interface. In both cases there is usually some style development but a completely custom style will often take longer to develop.
  5. iPhone Icons, Vista & Windows 7 Icons?
    You may want your icons to be compliant with a specific operating system and include all the different sizes and colour depths for full compatibility. However, depending on how and where your icons are used you may not need to go this far. We can advise on the best places to cut costs and save on unecessary design & development.

Defining your Style

Once we have established your technical requirements we need to gain a clear understanding of the sort of style you would like. Often the technical requirements will steer the project in a particular direction, as a software interface is likely to favour a more functional style whereas web or print graphics, the styles could be more elaborate and detailed, due to a larger available area.

Information required to help establish your style requirements:

  1. Tell us what you want.
    Set the mood for your project with as much information about the website or software as you can. If we know your target audience we can also advise on suitable styles. Some companies want a serious, professional look whereas others may require something more light hearted.
  2. Icon Examples
    Nothing can explain what you like better than examples of similar icons, a google Image search is often the best place to start. Any examples you provide should also include an explanation of what you do and don't like about them. If possible choose examples of a similar size to those you require, a beautiful 256x256 icon may provide the look you want but if you actually require only 16x16 icons, the same effect will not be possible (although we do our best!)
  3. Branding Guidelines
    Being familiar with your brand can help establish suitable palletes and allow us to pick up on design cues unique to your brand identity.

Reference Document

The Technical & Style requirements along with the number of icons is often enough for us to provide an estimate but to truly understand the scope of you project we will need more information about the individual Icons and the scope of the project. The best way to achieve this is to create a reference document, which could be a Word File, although an Excel file is probably easier to organise.

Creating this file can often help the client as well as our design team to fully understand the project, as it will likely raise unforseen questions. It is also a vital point of reference for all involved for the duration of the project and should be kept up to date as we develop the new icons.

The file will need to contain as much of the following information as possible for each icon. Ideally a column for each of the following is preferred. Of course we are happy to assist and answer any questions to make the creation of this document as simple as possible.

  1. A Reference Number
  2. Icon Title
  3. Icon File Name
  4. Existing Icon Image if available
    Knowing what it is we are replacing can often be a helpful step, espeically if you provide feedback (see no. 8)
  5. Icon Family or Group
    A family is a group of icons associated with a similar function or sharing common design themes. Ideally group familiar icons together.
  6. Detailed Description of Icon Use
    The more information you can provide here the better. If for software it usually helps to organise a remote demonstration for the designers
  7. Icon Type / Environment
    Usually this is a requirement  of software projects. The specific functionality such as an 'explorer view', 'drop down' menu or 'toolbar' can affect the size of design of the icons, especially when different background colours may be used.
    Where it will be used in an application or website.
  8. Comments on Existing Icon
    Do you like or dislike the existing concept or does this also need re-creating?
  9. Concept Ideas you would like us to explore.
    You know the product or website, what do you think would work?
  10. Priority
    In large projects you may want to have icons delivered in a specific order.
  11. Sizes
    List all the individual sizes you require or if you need a vector format, then just the maximum and minimum sizes the file will be used at.
  12. Comments
    Any other information you may have or wish to add to the particular icon as the project progresses.

All of the above information represents our absolute ideal in terms of feedback from our clients. However we do appreicate this level of information isn't always easily accessible and certainly don't insist on everything before we can commence on a project.