iA on Icons

iA wrote a wonderful piece on the use of icons within tactile and navigational interfaces, as a way of promoting their new game Iconic. I’m a big fan of their software, which I use on both phone & desktop (losing access to iA Writer for my personal computer was one of this biggest concessions I made when switching to the Surface.) and also of the transparency they practice in both their products and their process. This article is a smart distillation of something they’ve been conceptualizing for a long time (which beta users of iA Writer 3 were witness to, as they tested interfaces with text-only functions and actions). I’m grateful to see other designers thinking out loud about fundamental components of design, since it can so often feel like there are established solutions, rather than an ongoing dialogue about how and why these components work.