UI icons

• Design and production guidelines
• Producing an icon
• Exporting SVGs
• Contribution process

Design and production guidelines

• All icons should be unique and not redundant with any existing icons in the system. Search the library for the keyword(s) associated with your proposed new icon to ensure that it is not already represented.
• All icons should adhere to the IBM Design Language visual style.
• All icons should comply with IBM accessibility standards.
• All icons should be usable across all supported platforms and devices.
• All icons should be understandable by a global audience of users, regardless of nationality or language.

Making an icon

• Create a 16px x 16px or 32px x 32px artboard for each icon.
• 16 px icons should have 1 px padding. 32 px icons should have 2 px padding.
• Set your workspace up from the start to snap to pixels and round values to whole pixels to avoid correcting shapes later.
• Never use center borders. Centering can cause half pixels.
• Avoid using the line tool; use the rectangle tool instead. The line tool will place the vector on half pixels.
• Be aware of automatic alignments which can place vectors on uneven or half pixels.
• Ungroup icon layers completely. The icon should be on the top-most layer in your artboard.
• Make sure to properly name layers and artboards. These names will also be exported into the code.

Production-ready

• Icons should be at whole pixels. No decimals are allowed in x and y coordinates or width and height fields
• Each artboard and the artwork within it must be aligned to the pixel grid
• All strokes must be expanded and at full pixel values
• All possible shapes and paths should be combined

Exporting SVGs

Export SVGs from Sketch

1. Draw a 16px x 16px or 32px x 32 px artboard. 16px icons should have 1px padding. 32px icons should have 2px padding.
2. Place the icon squarely on the artboard, making sure it’s aligned to the pixel grid.
3. Convert all strokes to outlines (Shift + ⌘ + O).
4. Select any overlapping shapes and click the Union icon from the top navigation to merge all of the shapes together.
5. Make sure the icon is at #000000 and has no additional styling.
6. Select the entire artboard, not just the icon.
7. Click Make Exportable at the bottom of the right toolbar in Sketch.
8. In the Export widget select “SVG” in the format dropdown.
9. Click Export 'Artboard-Name'.
10. Name icon with the #name--modifier convention, for example, copy.svg, copy-glyph.svg, add.svg, add-glyph.svg.

Export SVGs from Adobe Illustrator

1. Draw a 16px x 16px or 32px x 32 px artboard. 16px icons should have 1px padding. 32px icons should have 2px padding.
2. Place the icon squarely on the artboard, making sure it’s aligned to the pixel grid.
3. Expand all strokes (Object > Expand).
4. Select all overlapping shapes and click the “Unite” icon in the Pathfinder panel to merge all of the shapes together.
5. Make sure the icon is at #000000 and has no additional styling.
6. Select File > Save a Copy… from the top navigation.
7. On the Format dropdown select “SVG”.
8. Below Format select Use Artboard, then select either all or a range of artboards, depending on your need.
9. Click Save.
10. The SVG Options dialog will then open.
11. Make sure the preferences are the same as in the image shown here.

Contribution process