KDE Visual Design Group/Icon HIG cleaning

Icon HIG Cleaning project

The goal of this project is to provider clearer and stricter HIG's for icons as well as improve icons that have, through user testing proven to be difficult to read as symbols.

Problem Background

The main issue with icons in Plasma is that they are often abused by developers who go through the visuals available in applications like Cuttlefish, and pick the icon they think is the prettiest and hardlink to them. Other issues that have come up is that some appdevs simply ship their own icons. Both of these methods will cause breakage. Either when the icon theme is changed - meaning the hardlink will point to an icon which has nothing to do with the action they want to illustrate through an icon or that the shipped icons will simply destroy the theme and visual consistency.

The secondary problem, and the reason why we started this project is due to issues with readability. Specifically in applications like Kmail where the icons for "Read Email" for example show the symbol that is needed ("this is already read") to be displayed in a tiny unclear format and the icon it is connected to ("This is an email") is given huge center position in comparison to the relevant information.

Goal of Project

To have a clear set of HIG's with examples and definitions of goals for each icon set. To improve out current icon theme and do it in a structured and safe way to avoid the problem with breaking design. A third goal is to try to get others involved in icon design - and provide a nice obvious way to participate with the VDG.

Work Structure

First we will see which icons have proven to be complex to read, compare them with the HIG, rework icons as needed, rewrite the HIG to provide stricter and clearer guidelines for icon designers who would want to contribute. This work will be guided by Andreas Kainz, the icon maintainer, as his work is directly hingent on clear guidelines and simple ways to provide icons.

Problem 1: Unclear Email Icons

The main issue with the email icons is that they are in their current state, unclear to the user.

[Image of Email Icons]

The main problem here is size of elements - and an unclear message. The email is irrelevant in comparison with the exclamation mark for example. The user understand that she is in an email application, what she needs to know is what in the email application just happened. It is a breakage from the goal of a typographical rule set where hierarchy of information must be key. The relevant information must be the biggest.

Communication Channels for Icon HIG Cleaning

[Link to IRC] [Link to Email List] [Link to Telegram Group] [Link to Forum Thread]