A Studio's New Icon Set Ditches Every Convention
By Tomas Adeyemi
No rounded corners. No consistent stroke weight. A triangle where a play button should be, pointing very slightly downward.
The system has to survive people who do not care about it. That is the actual test, and it happens in procurement, in email signatures and on signage nobody briefed.
Tomas Adeyemi, who saw the set in progress, has been close to it from the start.
Background
The set was drawn at 48 pixels and never tested smaller, which the studio treats as a constraint rather than an oversight.
The timeline tells its own story: eighteen months from first conversation to the point anyone outside the room saw anything, and then six weeks in which everything visible was decided.
The client tested it against their old set with 400 users, and comprehension went up on 14 icons and down on three.
Consistency is a way of avoiding decisions. We made 60 decisions instead.
the studio's founder
The method
Each icon breaks one rule and only one, so the family holds together while no two members share a grid.
The system survives or fails on its worst application, not its best, and nobody presents that slide.
Reaction has split along predictable lines. The people who have to maintain it have the sharpest questions, and the fairest ones.
There is no shortage of people willing to call it inevitable in hindsight. Nobody involved describes it that way.
Where it goes
The three that lost are being redrawn. The rest ship next month.
