Case Studies
How I contributed to the design system by creating icons from scratch
Overview
Icon library at Synaptic needed an update due to visual inconsistencies that occurred over the period of time with growing requirements accompanied by the aim of strengthening brand personality while adapting them according to the new typography, colours, and dark mode requirements.
Aim
• Versatile icons that appear consistently across devices. Flexibly designed to be used in multiple situations
• Intentionally designed to be clearly recognisable or easily identifiable across the globe
• Made with scalability, future relevance, and Synaptic's personality - bold and interactivity kept in mind
Process
First step was to pitch in with hand-drawn icons from memory in order to find its most basic representation as per our mental models and then digitise them to see what was working, from there came in other iterations as I further explored
Second step was following the standard guidelines that we had come up with after following and researching multiple design systems that had the principles and ideas that we were going for.
There were versions that looked pleasing but in the end were too complex if we saw it from a mobile screen perspective so we had to let them go – the process was filled with decisions that wasn't led just by the aesthetics but more by the usability and recognition, keeping future reference in mind
From some icons that were Synaptic specific – we had to dive into what that specific metric offered to the users and went a little abstract by brainstorming about it
A good example for the same is the Tagging Tool