This week we were introduced to how efficient icons can be in the design world, we uncovered the universal language that icons represent and how our day to day icons are simple and minimalistic, I think most icons these days have been reduced to the bare minimum because minimalism makes things appear futuristic and high class, whereas back in the 2000s icons were more skeuomorphic, these icons looked classy but as time has passed designers have embraced minimalism, another thing I learned is that icons when made too simple are hard to comprehend, and detailed icons ae often used as badges, this is something that I agree with because I have come across icon badges before, these are often seen games when you get rewarded for achieving something.
We looked at some Olympic event icons and how easily they communicate the event, they do the job with so minimal effort, looking at these icons reminded of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games
As seen in the image above the icons representing the events are minimal just like most of the other icons in previous and up to date Olympic Games. I particularly like these icons because how how flowy and effortless they look
The standardisation of icons and our ability to process images quickly makes it easier for us to interpret icons, this is because humans navigate through UI by scanning our eyes across the screen.
What I got from this whole lecture is that icons are critical in the design world because they help simplify an app, the more identical they look the better as this avoids the user from being overwhelmed by all the visuals on the screen, it easy easy for people to understand icons due to how standardized they’ve become. Icons should simply serve their purpose and make a user’s experience easy; another thing I learned is that it is important to be consistent with them and have your icons in different sizes for different screens and devices.