A week ago I presented a quick proposal to folks on Slack to add a few new icons and tweak some of the existing ones. The initial proposal was captured in last week’s meeting notes, but I’ve been working on said icons since and wanted to cristalize the final group of icons on this post.
All of these icons have been added to the Proposals page on the WordPress Components Figma file.
Tweaking existing icons
The suggestion is to make a slight tweak to icons that have human representations, replacing the solid dot (generally reserved for interface elements) for a more open, outlined shape. I personally find this change humanizes the icons a lot, and makes them much more consistent with themselves and rest of the library.
Changes:
- The solid dot for the heads turns into an outlined shape.
- Icons affected:
peopleandblock-post-author.
Adding new icons
The goal with these is to extend the icon library, and do so respecting the foundational philosophy and icon architecture. The more comprehensive the core icon library is, the more useful it becomes to block/theme/plugin authors. And the more it becomes a common good, the more cohesive the WordPress experience will be, and more people are willing to contribute back to it.
Additions:
bug/no-bug– useful in technical contexts such as issues, bug reports, fixes, changelogs, etc.security– using the shield metaphor to convey protection against existing threats, applies to site health and plugins in general.add-card– a generic element to add new elements beyond just the block editor.key– to be paired with the lock icons, or for plugins that support licenses.
Worth repeating that the idea is to add icons that can be used by anyone, in diverse and distinct contexts, and serve multiple purposes.
Feedback
Would love to hear your thoughts, concerns, and suggestions on the above. If there are no major disagreements or changes to be done, the next step would be create a PR to submit all of these to the repo.