Icons
Design and production guidelines
Don’t see the icon you need in the library? Make your own! Follow these guidelines to ensure visual consistency and proper formatting.
- 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 16 x 16 or 32 x 32 px 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).
- Review the icon master file to see these guidelines in practice.
Production-ready
To be considered production-ready, all icon submissions must be delivered in SVG format at 16 x 16 px (for integration with Carbon components) or 32 x 32 (for service icons).
- 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 Adobe Illustrator.
- Draw a 16 x 16 or 32 x 32 px artboard. 16 px icons should have 1 px padding. 32 px icons should have 2 px padding.
- Place the icon squarely on the artboard, making sure it’s aligned to the pixel grid.
- Expand all strokes
Object→Expand. - Select all overlapping shapes and click the “Unite” icon in the Pathfinder panel to merge all of the shapes together.
- Make sure the icon is at
#000000and has no additional styling. - Select
File→Save a Copy...from the top navigation. - On the
Formatdropdown select “SVG”. - Below
FormatselectUse Artboard, then select either all or a range of artboards, depending on your need. - Click
Save. - The
SVG Optionsdialog will then open. - Make sure the preferences are the same as in the image below.
Contribution process
Does your icon have potential for other products at IBM? If so, please consider contributing to the design system. IBM welcomes icon contributions to our iconography library. You’re welcome to submit a single icon or a batch of icons for approval.
Getting started
Before submitting artwork, first review our icons library or download the Carbon icon master .ai file to check your design for duplication against existing icons.
Approval process
Icons for use within IBM must go through a design review process to ensure consistency and proper representation of the IBM brand across all environments. The process begins when you create a GitHub issue. Design review and approval typically take 14–21 days from issue creation, depending on the number of icons contributed.
If your submission is accepted, the team will assign someone to your issue. If changes are needed, the team will note them in the issue and may return your submission with recommendations or suggest reworking the icon based on feedback from the Design System and Brand teams.
Once the submission is approved it will then go through our process to be included into the Adobe Illustrator IBM Icon master file and be made available in the IBM Design Language and Carbon libraries.