When your software depends on clarity, speed, and visual polish, custom icon sets are more than just decoration, they’re a core part of the user experience. At Creative Freedom, we specialise in delivering bespoke icon sets for complex software, and we’ve refined a process that takes our clients from rough ideas to fully implemented custom icon sets with minimal stress and maximum impact.
Here’s a detailed look at how we do it.
🎨 Icon Style Development: Laying the Foundation
Every project begins with understanding your needs. We take your brief, ask the right questions, and guide you through any technical considerations, such as icon sizes, file formats, and platform limitations. If needed, we help educate stakeholders on the difference between pixel-based and vector icons, or the pros and cons of styles like flat, outline, 3D and everything in between.
Next, we create multiple concept sketches for a small subset of icons — typically 4 to 8 — offering different visual directions. This stage is highly collaborative. You give feedback on what feels right, and we refine until we land on a final approved style.
Once the direction is locked in, we produce production-ready icons in all necessary sizes and formats. For larger projects, we create a full Icon Style Guide to keep everything consistent. For smaller sets, we streamline things to suit your budget and timeline, always staying flexible to your needs.
⚙️ Icon Production: Bringing Your Custom Icon Set to Life
With the style approved, we move into full icon production, and this is where our Icon Manager tool shines.
No more juggling email threads or messy shared folders. Icon Manager gives you a centralised, visual project dashboard. Each icon is uploaded with all its versions, sizes, and file formats, allowing you to:
- View and compare different versions side-by-side
- Approve or request edits with a single click
- Leave feedback directly on individual icons
- Download files anytime — individually or in bulk
- Track progress in real time
We can even match the background colour of Icon Manager to your app’s UI for a more realistic preview experience.
This approach streamlines your workflow, keeps everything organised, and reduces costly revision cycles.
🔄 Flexibility When You Need It
Not every icon project starts from a blank slate. Many of our clients come to us with an existing visual language, sometimes developed in-house, sometimes based on established systems like Google’s Material Icons. One of our largest ongoing collaborations, for example, involves 6,000+ icons for Aveva, built on a customised Material base that we continue to refine and expand as their needs evolve.
Whether you’re looking to establish a completely new icon style or maintain consistency with an existing system, we adapt our process accordingly. Thanks to our large, diverse team of icon designers, each with their own native strengths and stylistic expertise, we’re uniquely positioned to offer both creative flexibility and the production capacity that freelancers or smaller agencies simply can’t match.
From subtle refinements to full-scale icon overhauls, we’ve got the team, the tools, and the experience to slot in wherever you need us most.
🚀 Ready to Elevate Your UI?
Whether you need a dozen icons or thousands, we’ve built our process to deliver high-quality, scalable icon sets that are easy to manage and ready to deploy.
