: Is there an ISO or similar recognized standard for Icons? I had this question popping out while viewing some ISO standards such as ISO 9142. I searched a little but couldn't find an explicit

@Correia448

ISO's technical committee TC 145 is responsible for graphical symbols:


Standardization in the field of graphical symbols as well as of colours and shapes, whenever these elements form part of the message that a symbol is intended to convey, e.g. a safety sign.


You can find a list of related ISO standards and those under their direct responsibility.



If the icons contain text, have a look at W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), where you can find guidelines how to make the images accessible (contrast).

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@Samaraweera207

I don't think there is an ISO rule for icons, but there definitely are some 'standards' for Desktop applications.

Size-wise, Windows .ico icons range from 16x16 to 48x48 (pre-Vista), up to 256x256 (post-Vista). Mac OS X .icns icons go from 16x16 up to 512x512. Favicons for web have to be 16x16.

There are some naming agreements as well, they have to be composed of US-ASCII characters, and the dash “-” is used to separate levels of specificity (edit-copy, edit-cut, edit-paste).

But I think every program has its own conventions. For example, Symantec follows this one. While some of them are more or less common ground ("Color icons indicate objects that are in a healthy, running condition. Gray icons indicate objects that are offline."), specific functionalities follow their own internal rules.

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