The making of an icon(s)

How we made a globally recognisable and scalable icon library.

Icons. The small, seemingly insignificant, hieroglyph-esque things you see everywhere. While small, they are mighty, and play a crucial role in our modern life. From helping us find our way through a foreign city, to making a new service feel intuitive to use, those little icons do a lot of heavy lifting.

As an international brand, these simple and recognisable visual metaphors are one of the ways we can communicate on a global scale. But we can’t do that if our icons are misunderstood and messy. As part of our rebrand, our challenge was to take our unorganised and illogical icon library, and create something streamlined, usable, and ready for the world.

Less is more

Wise’s updated brand vision is to be bold, ownable and accessible. With ambiguous metaphors and loose design rules, our existing icon suite wasn’t that. In order for our new icons to speak to everyone, everywhere, we needed to make foundational changes.

We started by simplifying the visual metaphors and removed cryptic naming. In other words, we called a spade a spade, and made it look like one too.

We called a spade a spade, and made it look like one too.

We used solid lines and simple shapes, with no unnecessary parts, to create stronger recognisability at all sizes. Because less is always more.

Finally, we created visual alignment with our typography, ensuring we matched the terminals and weight. Leaving us with a uniquely Wise set.

Chaotic beginnings

Imagine this.