Ever since humanity first arrived on the scene one of the ways we've communicated with each other was through visual symbols. Written language itself evolved from the pictorial symbols created by the Sumerians to conduct business! (Now that's too long of a story to write now, but you can read about it here if you like.) Even as books arrived on the scene, the creators would add value to their labor's internal messages by illuminating the pages with drawings of the written content to reach as many people as possible. Adding pictures to the books sold more books. Adding icons to an application or website increases reader (and customer) involvement.

You see, images and symbols allow more information to be tightly packed into a space reserved for a communique. Images and symbols also provide a greater opportunity for international communication as the language barriers are pulled down a bit: we all know the icons for food, hospital, medical help, and of course, money, to name a few. Sometimes a picture is the best tool to accomplish a goal.

So, with our own website we added icons to the navigation to add some visual richness (of course, it's a website!) and for better communication, most importantly, as transparency is one of IT by Design's core values. Each icon in the menu has a specific meaning and was specifically created to best fit for the message and the audience. We looked through quite a few sketches and picked the best idea. As we want to be known for being the best at what we do, we had to try out a few options, disregarding some, culling only the best solutions.

To ease the visitor into efficiently finding what they're seeking, we added 'rollover' states to the icon to communicate more to the visitor about their pondered selection. Those rollover states not only add quality at every level of the icons, but helps build a conversation, and conversations build trust.

No human achievements are possible without clarity or relationships of trust. All this in an icon? Yes. Next time you're in a situation where goods or services are exchanged, pay attention to the tiny cues that inform your the decisions made by the involved parties and note how many of those are influenced by the visual presentation of the information provided and/or received.

Have a look at our process sketches. At IT by Design we choose the best tool to make the best solution to the problem, a nd you'll see this for yourself when you see those sketches. We like it that our employees want to come to work (even on Mondays) and we think it shows even in the sketches because we have people solving problems for other people.