Zed Icons, for communication beyond language
Zed Icons contains two thousand icons designed to break down language and cultural barriers, facilitating quick and effective communication in situations where words or translations are not enough.
Zed Icons contains two thousand icons designed to break down language and cultural barriers, facilitating quick and effective communication in situations where words or translations are not enough. Available in a variety of weights, optical sizes and visual styles, these icons seamlessly match the proportions of the font being used. They improve accessibility for the general public and users with cognitive disabilities and, when used with Zed Text or Display, promote greater inclusivity in diverse contexts. This project builds on the well-accepted DOT pictograms created by the US Department of Transportation and graphical symbols recommended by the ISO 7001 standard, and extends them to meet the practical requirements of the 21st century. While the DOT pictograms were intended to be universal, Zed Icons allow them to be tailored to specific contexts.
A personal style tailored to the context
While images provide a universal visual language, the perception of icon style is highly personal and needs to be tailored to specific contexts. Zed Icons excel in this regard, offering a unique level of adaptability with three adjustable variable axes. These axes allow users to change the weight, visual size and roundness of the icons, creating hundreds of unique design styles. This flexibility makes the icons both versatile and visually harmonious in different applications. Designer Ondrej Jób created each icon eight times – for small and large optical sizes, with thin or thick outlines, with square or rounded edges. Combinations of all these variants give users access to thousands of variations available through variable font technology. And if your project doesn’t support variable fonts, we’ve developed tools that allow you to select your preferred style and generate new variants of your choice directly in your online account.
Designed for accessibility
The design process prioritised accessibility, ensuring that the icons are not only visually appealing, but also highly functional and inclusive at all sizes and in different contexts. Each icon has been designed with clarity and unambiguity as the core principles, creating essential shapes that are easily recognisable at a glance and have been tested across a range of audiences. Rather than relying on intricate or decorative elements, the focus was on distilling each concept into its most essential and universally understood form. Rigorous testing was conducted in a variety of environments – digital and print, high and low contrast – to ensure that the icons were accessible to all users, including those with visual impairments or cognitive challenges. The result is a cohesive icon set that enhances usability, integrates seamlessly into design systems and provides users with clear, intuitive visual communication. Each icon comes with a set of metadata, which makes them easy to use. Just type a description of the icon into the search field to find the symbol you are looking for.
Design consistency
The initial release of Zed Icons contains over 2,000 icons, and the challenge was to draw them consistently, without visual inconsistencies in details, to make them a cohesive set. We took inspiration from our traditional font development, and instead of designing individual drawings in Adobe Illustrator, we’ve developed a unified visual language, a Glyphs-based production workflow, and proprietary proofing methods that allow us to control the details of each icon globally, reuse similar shapes, and automate repetitive tasks using Python scripting. This method allowed us to maintain design consistency and a high level of technical precision, and to check the style of each icon against other related icons and shapes, ensuring a cohesive final set of icons whose range can be expanded in the future.
Localisation of symbols
While symbols and icons work across many languages, Zed Icons is also localised to different cultures based on region, language or religion. For example, while most languages are read from left to right, Arabic, Urdu and Hebrew are read from right to left, and the direction and movement in icons associated with these languages should also be reversed. Therefore, Zed Icons includes two directions for symbols that require them. Other symbols, such as First Aid, require different designs when serving different regions. The cross is replaced by a crescent in Muslim countries, the Star of David is served in Israel, the Star of Life is a universal symbol for medical identification and used across East Asia, while the crystal shape is considered a religion-neutral version. Zed Icons includes all of these, along with other region-specific symbols.
Suggest an icon
The initial release of Zed Icons includes an extensive collection of 2,000 icons, with hundreds more to be added in future updates. We recognise that there may be specific icons or designs not yet included that could be valuable for your particular needs. If you identify a missing icon, we encourage you to contact us and share the context of the icon you need. Your input will help us refine and expand our collection to better serve different situations. We will continue to add new icons and improve the metadata tags to make them more usable. Please fill out the form to let us know!