Every company would like to operate as efficiently as possible. This principle covers all business areas, including the creation of advertising materials, presentations and online presences. I have worked for many years as a freelancer for companies and found out that many companies have requirements for stock media, especially icons for business, which are currently not really covered by many providers.
1. Long search for matching icons
Currently, there is a strong competition on online marketplaces. The most important criterion is the number of icons that the portal offers. But is it really useful for an efficient creation of a presentation to have to choose from millions of icons? Because the icons almost come from different designers, the styles vary and thus it is difficult to find matching icons. This complicates the search and hinders the workflow when creating your advertising material. Here it is worthwhile to rely on visually consistent icons.
2. Visual look of infographics inconsistent
Large companies define a uniform font and color scheme in their marketing guidelines for good reason. The aesthetics of photos are also defined. Icons also contribute to a uniform look of advertising materials and promote a professional appearance of your company. Good infographics and presentation already let the company be recognized due to a uniform appearance and strengthen the brand. In most cases, the corporate design manuals of the companies do not contain a corresponding definition of a visually uniform icon set, which is used for the advertising material.
3. Icons for businesses are often stored somewhere
Access to media for creating advertising materials is handled differently by companies. Often, files are hidden in subdirectories on servers or locally on the employee’s computer. This makes it difficult to get quick access to the media you are looking for. Good file organization is therefore important for the efficient creation of presentations, advertising materials and infographics.
4. Terms of use can be difficult to comply with
Online marketplaces usually have different license models. You will usually find a standard license and an extended license. With the standard license, the terms of use are sometimes linked to the number of hits. It is therefore relevant to comply with the license condition, how often your content is called by users. For companies, this is difficult to keep track of, especially if you use your advertising material in many different sales channels.
5. Incorrect file formats
There are great file formats that allow you to colorize and edit icons. You can integrate them directly into presentations without having to remove backgrounds or accept losses in scaling. Unfortunately, many companies still use the wrong formats in their presentations. The icons are pixelated or not in the correct company color. If you use icons in your company you should make sure that you use icons for businesses in SVG format. If your program does not support SVG format, you should use PNG file (at least 512px). PNG files make it more difficult to color the icon, but at least they have a transparent background, which makes it easier to integrate the icon into your advertising materials. Poor resolution JPG files are the most unsuitable for the integration of icons.
Icons for Businesses solution:
Not every company, or every employee of a company is a design professional. To help companies make their infographics and presentations more consistent and professional, I’ve developed a solution for businesses. My icons for business can be easily accessed from anywhere via any internet browser or directly in a PowerPoint add-in. This avoids the problem of files disappearing somewhere in subdirectories on computers or servers.
In the user interface, the icons for business are displayed in SVG file format. This allows lossless scaling. In addition, you can easily colorize and edit icons. The file size is so small that even a large number of icons hardly take up any disk space.
Because all icons are based on a common design grid, it is easy to combine icons and create visually consistent presentations and infographics.
