Icon Design: The Importance of Organizing Your Artboard
Organizing and keeping your artboard clean is essential. No matter if you work with a client or as a freelance designer, it’s important that your final design is neat and looks professional.
Besides, as a Flaticon contributor, your content may be rejected if it doesn’t meet our standards. So these are some good reasons why you should organize your artboard and read this post.
Below we break down the most common errors among contributors in terms of artboard organization, and we share with you some tips on how to avoid them.
Common errors
1. Leaving icon’s components outside the artboard
All the elements or parts that form the icon must be inside the artboard. Think of the artboard as an empty canvas: you don’t want to spoil the surface underneath it, do you?
Plus, our team will reject your icons if the artboard isn’t clean or the elements aren’t arranged properly.
2. Forget reference images outside the artboard
Frequently, designers use text or images as a reference for their own design, which is great. However, make sure you remove them from your file before submitting your resources.
3. Using a white square as a guide
Contributors sometimes insert a white square as a guide instead of using the artboard. This square isn’t necessary, so if this happens, we’ll reject your resources.
Instead, use the artboard (with adequate size) for the icon creation process.
4. Isolated nodes in the artboard
After finishing the design, check artwork and remove all the nodes that don’t belong o the final design.
How to avoid rejection
TIP 1: Work with adequate artboard dimensions
If you’re designing for Flaticon, we recommend you work with a 512 x 512 pt artboard. Working with a small artboard sometimes leads to technical issues.
TIP 2: Keep your artboard clean
By now, you must already know that it’s essential that you don’t leave unwanted elements in your artboard. Before submitting your design, make sure you clean the artboard. You can do it as follows:
- With the Outline mode (Ctrl + Y / Cmd + Y) to easily identify unwanted elements.
- With the Clean up feature (Object > Path > Clean up) to delete empty objects from your artwork.
Organizing your artboard is just one step to delivering professional design and engaging users. We recommend you have a look at our reasons for rejection for Flaticon’s contributors so you can make the most of your icons!
