SIEMENS
Siemens Digital Industries have built the world’s leading suite of engineering, manufacturing and electronics design software. Firebrand created an icon design system to identify and distinguish the hundreds of products, sub-products and product families.
Services
- Competitor Research
- Naming Strategy
- Icon Concepts
- Icon Design System
- Design Guidelines
- Asset Production
Objectives
- Create an icon design system for more than 1,000 desktop, mobile and SaaS products
- Design an architecture that combines corporate and software suite alignment with individual product differentiation
Devising a meaningful icon naming strategy
Most product icons are a pictorial representation of the task that the software performs. However, after exploring all figurative and symbolic icon approaches, the cognitive load on users was considered too great. Only initialisms had the instant recognition and inbuilt language needed to distinguish the vast family of products.
Solving a complex design challenge
Firebrand applied a decade of icon design experience to solve the complex challenge of overcoming complexity through simplicity and order. By creating hand-drawn fonts, legibility at compact sizes was improved. Painstakingly-designed colour ramps helped to group Siemens product families while following disability standards.
Delivering a design system for UX designers
Firebrand built ready-to-use Adobe Illustrator icon design templates for desktop, favicon, and in-app versions. These allow other designers throughout Siemens to develop assets rapidly and consistently. The templates are complemented with naming and colour guidelines, plus technical instructions hosted as part of an internal UX hub.
