Icons are more than just little links for Facebook or Instagram; they may also be fully interactive signals that assist guide people through a design and add visual interest. Icons can be little or huge, black and white or colorful, flat or detailed, and so on. Whatever style you like, the efficient use of icons may improve the usability and aesthetic value of nearly any design project.
Icons and images serve as visual complements in digital designs. They are a fantastic tool for splitting up text-heavy content in a more digestible and interesting manner if you have a lot of information to show. You must be strategic in order to accomplish this efficiently.
Continue reading to learn about seven amazing methods to include icons and images in your digital design:
1. Encourage Interaction:
Interaction gives a design flow. As a result, adding it to your design might help you make it more dynamic. The challenge now is how to incorporate interactivity into a digital design. You may believe that in order to develop interactions with users, you must fit the symbols into precise places. No way!
Since most template creators always opt for the three-column icon or text combination in their scroll, this tactic has been widely adopted. We advise you to make sure that your design’s icons can initiate interaction on their own. Iconography and vertical scrolling can be used together to accomplish such. Items would slide across the screen as a result. You may add additional layers of dynamism to the design by layering your free vector icons with a background or a collection of photographs.
2. Custom Sketches:
Incorporate the spirit of art into your digital designs. How can I do that? Since icons are really little canvases for art, consider first how they will be used in your design. In today’s iconography, the majority of individuals use line drawings or extremely flat renditions. As a result, each of them has a boring vibe.
Making your design useful from everyone else’s can help you break that up. For example, you may use detailed drawings to set your work apart from the rest of the generic work. This is where attending a reputable animation school for training is essential since the skills you gain there will help you put them together. You can never learn the finer points from any number of YouTube lessons, no matter how many you watch.
3. Collection of Icons:
Do you know how a collage usually pulls up the best of a series? Similarly, with your digital design, you may achieve the same with a cluster of icons. Hand-crafted icons, drawings, and forms may be used to produce a pleasant visual that not only looks good but also delivers the information in an interesting way. This helps you to think beyond the box and be more creative.
For example, when you believe there is a lack of nice visuals, you may create a row of icons and play with them instead of making them bigger or undersize. The icons you use can be shown as links. The content of your design will mostly affect whether you want the photos to stand alone or form a chain connection. If you don’t want to create your own cluster of icons, you may even personalize a pack of icons to bring your campaign to life. Play around with both choices to find which one best meets your needs.
4. Visual Interest:
This may seem clear to you, but sometimes the most obvious points are the ones that are overlooked. As a result, we believe that we must emphasize this issue clearly. Listen! Throughout your career, you will work on a variety of projects. Some will be easy, while others will be difficult. There will undoubtedly be occasions when you either run out of amazing photographs for the project or find yourself in a scenario where no images may be used.
This is where you should let your imagination run wild. When combined with humorous iconography, even plain, bland, and generic photographs may appear quite engaging. You can strive to improve an image’s content, highlight a piece of information, or provide a hint that leads to an engagement. If you know how to do things correctly, the possibilities are unlimited.
5. Label Charts and Graphs in Your Digital Design:
Frequently, the campaign you are planning will involve lots of new statistics and facts. It is now your responsibility as a graphic designer to find out how to make those statistics appear engaging. In other words, you can’t expect your client’s target audience to waste their time reading line after line of numbers and statistics.
Thus, in your digital design, employ appealing charts and graphs to show those data. Make them colorful and eye-catching so that they immediately capture the attention of the target audience. This is true for all designs that depend heavily on infographics. Your objective should be to make the text and statistics visible to the intended audience.
Labeling charts and graphs may help the average person grasp complicated topics in a straightforward way. Make sure you only use icons that are relevant to the subject. You don’t have to add all free vector icons simply for the sake of it. When you replace written papers with plain text and numbers with a labeled graph or chart with visual logos, you create a more accessible, cleaner, and thus more effective design.
6. Bring the Element of Animation:
Naturally, dynamic animation has a far greater effect than its static equivalents. People remember dynamic designs better for a reason. Because dynamic art appeals to so many of our senses, our brains keep memories of it for longer. For this reason, you should integrate as many dynamic components as you can into your digital design. This does not need you to go overboard, though.
You’ve heard the expression “too much of something is bad.” People frequently make the typical error of making animation movements too quickly. This has the potential to make the entire project unsettling. On the opposite end of the scale, if your animation’s movements are too slow, your target audience will almost certainly miss them. You must locate the beautiful tiny spot in the center.
7. Consistency:
Your work should be recognizable to your intended audience. Consistency is the most important aspect of this. We are aware that there are too many appealing icon styles available, and it might be tempting to use them all. Your digital design, which acts as your signature piece of work, must, nevertheless, also be enhanced. After all, you don’t want to dominate your audience.
Try to keep the colors, size, and fonts of the text in your design consistent so that your brand identity is immediately identifiable. This also contributes to the cohesion of your design, which in turn contributes to the wonderfulness of your artwork.
Conclusion:
Icons may be used in an unlimited number of ways in digital designs. It is up to you as a graphic designer to determine how to overcome the problems brought to you and present them in an exciting and effective manner so that the creative aspect is fostered while simultaneously conveying the desired message of the advertising experience to its target audience.
Remember that there are no hard rules regarding the ideas or recommendations presented in the article. This is a creative field, so you may experiment with all of them and even mix it up to get the greatest end product for your customer. So, don’t limit yourself and continue to explore your ideas.
