Icons for Novacura
When developing a few icons for the same thing, there is a lot to think about. There may be different programs in a program suite, different functions within the same interface, or different parts of a company that should hold together visually. Here we look at how we created new icons for Novacura.
Customer:Novacura
Novacura are experts in business systems and process improvement. Their business areas are mainly production, distribution and service/maintenance as well as finance.

They needed help to create modern and appealing icons for their various applications, which will visualize and match the technologically advanced solutions. In addition to application icons, a set of consistent icons were also needed to be used in their process tools Flow.
Novacura also wanted to be able to use the application icons in other contexts such as printed matter, back drops and films. Therefore, all graphics were made as vector graphics in Adobe Illustrator, so that the final delivery (in addition to the icon files themselves) was originals that can be scaled up without any quality loss.

Flow is a program for creating process flows in a simple and intuitive way, in a view similar to a drawing program. As an icon, we therefore created a half-rolled drawing, with process arrows that are on their way out of the drawing.
The processes you create in the application will later take place in real life for example order management or production. We also added a pen to get the feeling that the user is creating something of their own, and to get a better composition in the icon.

Texo is an integration platform, and is far more abstract to visualize. We sketched out different ideas with arrows and flows that were merged, but it was difficult to interpret the icons and they became too academic. We chose instead to return the drawing idea from Flow, but with a gear that symbolizes the automatic process. It is clear that the applications belong to the same suite, but do completely different things.

In addition to these, we also created an icon for mobile devices, which also had to be quite abstract as it should be able to cover a number of possible uses. As a symbol of simplicity and ease, we chose a feather. Lighting and perspectives were chosen according to the guidelines of the Android interface as the program will mainly be used on such devices. We also designed a general web icon with the same process arrows around a globe, as well as a document symbol.
The icons were also supplemented with scaled outline variants used in photographs and other graphics where you want to be more subtle.

New, uniform, icons were also needed for use in Flow. To be able to scale the interface steplessly (to get a good overview) it was required that the icons were simple and clear. We worked on giving each icon a distinct color and silhouette, so that it is easy to distinguish them from each other even in very zoomed-out locations where they are only a few pixels large.

During the fall of 2014, we produced a number of illustrations for use in presentations and marketing. These symbolize Novacura’s various focus segments, as well as the people who work within them. The illustrations are adapted for a partially redesigned visual language with a flatter and more modern feel. At the same time, we are updating other icons and illustrations accordingly.

Both we and the customer are very satisfied with the work done, and we look forward to seeing the icons implemented in the sharp software in the future.
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