Iconfinder designer report Q1 2020
Fresh data to guide icon designers’ efforts in the first quarter of the new year.
In this report, you will find out about:
What icons to create in the first quarter of 2020
A look back at 2019 in the world of icons
Top seller category-style pairs
Introduction
With Iconfinder reaching 4 million icons, it is now more important than ever to know the market and create the right icons. First, we share some data on what seasonal icons to create in the first quarter of 2020 according to what customers search for. Then, we summarise what happened in the past year 2019 — what were the most searched keywords, the most popular design styles, the top seller categories and some important feedback collected from customers.
Seasonal searches in Q1
To determine what kind of icons customers look for in the first quarter of the year, we looked at what are the searches that stood out in Q1 2019 as compared to the previous quarter. Findings show that customers look for icons related to the main events in January, February, and March. These are, in chronological order:
- Chinese New Year (January 25, 2020)
- Valentine’s Day (February 14, 2020)
- Carnival (end of February; dates vary for each country)
- Spring (starts in March)
- Easter (April 12, 2020)
For all these events, icon searches start in advance, so it is a good idea to be early at uploading seasonal icons. The graph below shows how the number of searches for the seasonal keywords evolved during the quarter.
Here are some examples of seasonal sets that we consider as high quality, which can hopefully inspire you.
Marketing campaigns in Q1
Iconfinder will run a few marketing campaigns for which we will feature themed icons. The dates in the table indicate the duration of the campaigns. We recommend submitting the related icons at least two weeks prior to the campaign start date.
Here is an example of how we promote themed icons during our campaigns:
Most searched keywords of 2019
We looked at the keywords that have been used to search for icons in 2019 and ordered them from most searched to least.
The column called Supply-Demand ratio shows how competitive the Iconfinder market for that keyword is:
- A ratio lower than 1 means that there is space for more icons.
- A ratio higher than 1 means that the market is very competitive — there are more icons than searches for that keyword, so sales are not guaranteed.
The last column shows whether the searches for that keyword have been increasing or decreasing as compared to the same period last year.
Keywords with unmet demand
If you are wondering which keywords offer the biggest opportunity to add icons for, check the table below. It shows the same keyword list as above but, this time, ordered by the Supply-demand ratio. At the top of the list, with a ratio lower than 1, you will find the keywords that have fewer icons than searches, which have more chances of sales.
Complementary searches in 2019
We also looked at keywords that customers use together in a search. The first column contains the first keyword used. The middle column lists the second keyword used by the customer right after. For example, if we look at the first row, customers searched for “facebook” and then, immediately after, searched for “instagram” — this happened more than 41.000 times in 2019.
This data can give two important pieces of information.
First, it gives an idea of what icons to include in the same set — Complementary icons. If you know that, for example, customers look for “email” and then search for “phone” immediately after, you know your icon set should include icons for both keywords. This way, customers can buy them together.
And last, it gives a hint for tagging your icons better — Synonym tags. The data shows what keywords customers use to find icons and when these are synonyms, it is a good idea to tag your icons with both, as this will help the customer find the icon faster. Some examples of synonyms that customers frequently use are “file” and “document”, or “web” and “internet”.
To make things easier to find, the same data is grouped by keyword in the table below, to show all the different variations used when customers searched a second time. For example, we can see that the keyword “account” is used together with all these others: “accounting”, “accounts”, “bank”, “bank account”, “contact”, “email”, “login”, “profile”, “settings”, and “user”. This can give a good idea for both complementary icons and better tagging.
Most popular design styles of 2019
We also looked at how the icon sales evolved for the different design styles from 2017 to 2019. The graph below shows the percentage of icons sold from each major style over the years.
As the graph shows, the main design styles in order of sales are:
- Outline (29% of total sales in 2019)
- Glyph (25% of total sales in 2019)
- Flat (22% of total sales in 2019)
- Filled Outline (17% of total sales in 2019)
The next graph reveals that the Filled Outline style has been increasing in sales over time, while the other styles have been slightly decreasing.
Most popular icon categories of 2019
The table below presents the list of categories ordered by icon sales, with top-sellers first.
The top-seller categories in 2019 are:
- Business & finance (13.4% of total sales in 2019)
- UI (6.3% of total sales in 2019)
- Avatars & smileys (6.1% of total sales in 2019)
- Network & communications (5.1% of total sales in 2019)
Top seller category-style pairs of 2019
Let’s take a look at the category and style combinations that achieved most icon sales in 2019. It is not a surprise that the Business & finance and UI categories are at the top, as shown in the table below.
Underneath are some examples of good icon sets from the top seller category-style pairs.
Category-style pairs with unmet demand of 2019
From the previous list, we have filtered only the category-style pairs where the number of icons sold is larger than the number of icons available. This is a sign that there is room to add more icons.
Here are some examples of sets for the category-style pairs with unmet demand, to give you an idea of what we consider as high-quality icons.
Customer feedback
Customers use icons in various ways. Over the years, we have gathered some data, both quantitative and qualitative, about how customers use icons and what they look for when they come to Iconfinder.
The chart below shows that the main types of customers are designers and developers, followed by a more mixed group of marketing professionals, students and teachers, bloggers etc.
According to one of our surveys, customers use icons mostly for web design, app design, followed by presentations, marketing materials, educational materials, and others.
We also interviewed some customers to see some more specific use cases. Below, we have outlined some conclusions from our conversations with customers.
Icons need to be consistent
For most users, creating apps, websites, and presentations requires finding icons that all match with each other, so that the end result is consistent and neat. This means that you should offer customers large and all-inclusive icon families (a family is a group of icon sets that share the same visual style and all match with each other) so that they can find all the icons they need, without worrying that they won’t fit well together visually. For this, you need to create icons for many concepts, while sticking to the same visual style.
We wrote about icon families in an earlier designer report: Best practices with icon families.
Let’s look at how customers explained their need for consistent icons.
“ One of the challenges of using a site to buy individual icons is that it takes time to compile a set with matching styles. Many times, the icon designer does not have all of the icon categories we need, which means we must form a set of icons from different designers and make them appear to be from a set — even though they are not.” (Customer response to our survey in 2018).
“I want the icons I use throughout a presentation to be similar in color, level of detail, the degree of “realism” etc. It is very common to find several icons that fit the requirements but also find that they do not work well together. It is like going to a Chinese restaurant and getting a French cream soup as an appetizer, Peking duck for the entré and baked Alaska for dessert.” (Customer response to our survey in 2018)
Icons need to represent a large variety of concepts
Customers seem to prefer finding families of consistent icons that are also very inclusive with the concepts that they are representing. This way, they can rest assured that they will find the specific icons they need, while not worrying about the consistency.
Here are some notes from our conversations with customers, showing how they expressed their need for inclusive icon families:
“He mentioned he looked at the Material family, for instance, but it was still hard to find some specific icons. For example, icon for ‘prayer’.” (Notes from an interview in 2019 with a software developer who needed icons for an app for social media)
“It is hard to find ‘concept’ icons such as ‘frustrated’, ‘loyalty’, etc.” (Customer response to our survey in 2019)
For some other customers, consistency was not as important as finding icons that represented well some very specific concepts. The large variety of icons is important for freelance designers especially, as they use icons for different client projects and each client has different needs.
Here is some feedback from customers who cared less about consistency, but still wanted to find the right icon for their project:
“He doesn’t mind icons being not in the exact same style. For him, it’s more important how closely they represent the word/phrase he is looking for.” (Notes from an interview in 2019 with a customer who needed icons to illustrate a vocabulary for Iranian words)
“She needed all sorts of icons in different styles — from UI icons for homepage sections to “tiger rescue” and “medical device”. (Notes from an interview in 2019 with a freelance web developer who needed icons for different client projects)
Recommendations for designers
Work on creating large and comprehensive icon families where customers can find icons for more specific searches, while not worrying whether the icons will match together.
Conclusion
We hope that the data in this report can give you a good idea of what to work on in the first quarter of 2020 and how to make your icon shop more competitive.
This report is part of a series that are released every quarter. It crunches data on supply and demand on the Iconfinder marketplace, hoping to lead designers to create the right icons.
Drop us a message at support@iconfinder.com if you have any questions or feedback.
Are you interested in becoming a contributor on Iconfinder? This is the place to start: How to sell icons on Iconfinder
The cover image of this report was created by Sergei Kokota.
