Pictograms

• Design and production guidelines
• Producing an pictogram
• Exporting SVGs
• Contribution process

Design and production guidelines

• All pictograms should be unique and not redundant with any existing pictograms in the system. Look through the pictograms in the IBM Design Sketch kit to ensure that your proposed new pictogram is not already represented.
• All pictograms should adhere to the IBM Design Language visual style.
• All pictograms should comply with IBM accessibility standards.
• All pictograms should be usable across all supported platforms and devices.
• All pictograms should be understandable by a global audience of users, regardless of nationality or language.

Producing an icon

• Create a 32 x 32 px artboard for each pictogram.
• 32 px pictograms should have 1 px padding.
• Set your workspace up from the start to snap to pixels.
• Be aware of automatic alignments which can place vectors on uneven or half pixels.
• Ungroup pictogram layers completely. The pictogram should be on the top-most layer in your artboard.
• Make sure to properly name layers and artboards (these names will also be exported into the code).

Production-ready

• Each artboard and the artwork within it must be aligned to the pixel grid.
• All strokes must be expanded and at full pixel values.
• All possible shapes and paths should be combined.

Exporting SVGs

Export SVGs from Sketch

1. Draw a 32 x 32 px artboard. 32 px pictograms should have 1 px padding.
2. Place the pictogram squarely on the artboard, making sure it’s aligned to the pixel grid.
3. Convert all strokes to outlines(Shift + ⌘ + O)
4. Select any overlapping shapes and click the Union icon from the top navigation to merge all of the shapes together.
5. Make sure the icon is at #000000 and has no additional styling.
6. Select the entire artboard (not just the icon).
7. Click Make Exportable at the bottom of the right toolbar in Sketch.
8. In the Export widget select “SVG” in the format dropdown.
9. Click Export ‘Artboard-Name’.
10. Name icon with the #name—modifier convention. (ex. copy.svg, copy—glyph.svg, add.svg, add—glyph.svg).

Export SVGs from Adobe Illustrator

1. Draw a 32 x 32 px artboard. 32 px pictograms should have 1 px padding.
2. Place the icon squarely on the artboard, making sure it’s aligned to the pixel grid.
3. Expand all strokes (Object > Expand).
4. Select all overlapping shapes and click the “Unite” icon in the Pathfinder panel to merge all of the shapes together.
5. Make sure the icon is at #000000 and has no additional styling.
6. Select File > Save a Copy… from the top navigation.
7. On the Format dropdown select “SVG.”
8. Below Format select Use Artboard, then select either all or a range of artboards, depending on your need.
9. Click Save.
10. The SVG Options dialog will then open.
11. Make sure the preferences are the same as in the image below.
12. SVG export options image

Contribution process