Iconography Recommendations

[britanyponvelle]

Write recommendations for iconography:

• [ ] How to use icons
• [ ] Where to find IBM Design icons
• [ ] Examples
• [ ] Resources

[britanyponvelle]

@poofichu do you want to be assigned to this one?

[poofichu]

https://design.ibm.com/icon-library/

[poofichu]

Iconography

The IBM Design Language offers three types of iconography to address a variety of scenarios in which a visual representation is valuable to the user. Each icon will have assigned concepts it represents.

Visual Example

1. Preview of IBM Design Icons

Resources:

1. Link to Internal IBM Design Language Icon set (https://design.ibm.com/icon-library/)

Building Icons

When designing icons of your own, apply some basic building blocks to achieve harmony. Use geometric shapes to maintain consistency among various icons. Just the right amount of padding can ensure icons look similar in different sizes. Use sharp, technical outlines to evoke a sense of clarity and accuracy. Finish the icon off with a balancing solid for a sense of stability.

Resources:

1. Link to provided icon builder grid template (http://www.ibm.com/design/language/downloads/IconBuilder-v1.zip)

[Snugug]

These are two things I believe we need in our iconography section:

• Open-source link to the Design icon library (or we need to release it or something similar on our own).
• More robust title and descriptions of each icon. The icon pack that I have now the titles don't match in pretty much any way what I was expecting the icon to be for many items
• Gap analysis of the current icons with what makes sense for Watson, and maybe just some new icons are needed in general.

This may sound weird, but maybe we hold off on iconography until after the first release if this winds up being a lot to correlate.

[poofichu]

@Snugug all GOOD points, buddy.

1) Can't no do. The library is under restrictions. 2) We have to adhere to the IBM design language, so we can't change the title. Maybe I can look into helping them add better descriptions of said icons? 3) I LOVE this idea, but yeah, it might have to be pushed to after the first release. I'll add it to my list.

[Snugug]

IMO if design assets can't be accessed in an open source manner (or have an approved open source alternative) we can't use them. Our options for iconography can't be "get a license from IBM or you're on your own". If we're going to provide iconography, we need our users to have access to icons. Even Bootstrap was able to provide, for free, a subset of an otherwise proprietary icon set. Can we investigate why they need to be close-sourced? If there isn't a good justification, maybe we talk to Brad about pushing forward with an open source version anyway. Take our Typeface Recommendations (#120); while we're recommending the proprietary Helvetica Neue for IBM, we have a font stack that is consumable even if you don't have access to that font.

Number 2 I think is super important because I can't for the life of me use the icons as they are. If this means updating it on the language side, I'm all in favor of that, but that's gotta happen before they're consumable.

[poofichu]

BLOCKER -- Icons are in progress of getting an open source license. Working with the core team to get this figured out.

Three options proposed: 1 - Fast track the license 2 - Providing us with set that is open-sourced 3 - Launch with no mention of iconography until we can get this figured out.

[poofichu]

Meeting is setup for Monday with Hayley and @Snugug to further discuss licensing and usage of the icons.

[poofichu]

The core team is working on getting the license going, but having the icons open sourced will most likely not be ready for release candidate 1. @Snugug I believe we agreed to not have anything shown for the first release unless the files were open sourced. Continuing to leave this blocked .

[Snugug]

Moving to Release 1.1 as it's externally blocked.