Show your Brand Value with Icon Design

Posted by dwspriya on May 30th, 2011

Everyone knows what a logo is but in the world of icon design, this becomes even more important.  The main factor here, when designing an icon is to get the image associated with the product or site.  This obviously builds brand value which is a very precious principle to strive for.

Color is an important part of brand value since some colors are associated with a product or service.  For example, the Orange network will have all its icons branded with this color so the user has a subliminal message every time the icon is used.  Similarly, other large companies do the same thing so the choice of this color is very important.

However, when striving for this brand value, make sure that the colors are easily printable.  One good marketing angle here is that if the site or company becomes very popular, people will actually begin to purchase mugs, t-shirts and all kinds of paraphernalia bearing the icon or logo.  If it is found, too late, that the color does not print well, this could be a very costly error for sure.

Similarly, if brand value is to be maximized, it is imperative to make sure that the icon or logo works in a small format and in a larger format too.  Billboards may send the wrong message if the icon is used here and the whole image is very fuzzy which can often occur when the image is transferred to a larger format.  Similarly, too much detail will make it look over complicated when used for the tiny icons on the web pages.

It is easy to see then that although icons are used for many different purposes, including giving visual prompts to the public who may be from any part of the world, those which have brand value and help to sell the product or service actually achieve much more.  It is this psychological message that most designers will aim for whenever they are developing a site.

In order to find out more on Icon Design and similar web design or webmaster related resources, check out Design Contest which is an online service where you can run a contest to get multiple designs for different services.