Forma Icons’ Josep Duran on the stages, rules and secrets behind successful iconography design

From the minds at Forma, a graphic design and illustration studio based in Barcelona, comes Forma Icons. As their icon design division, Forma Icons specialises in meticulously crafted communication and navigation icons across a range of styles and industries. Along with an introduction to their practice, Partner Josep Duran shares Forma Icon’s process, their dream project, and what advice they would give to someone new to icon design. PT: How did you get into icon design? And how did it become such a significant part of Forma’s commercial work? JD: About 10 years ago, we designed the visual identity for El Born CC, a new important cultural equipment in Barcelona. As a part of this project, we were commissioned to design its wayfinding, which needed pictograms. The custom typography was used as a modular base to build the pictograms, and the result was a success. At the same time, we also had an illustration side at the studio, and we used icon-style solutions to solve some small commissions. Our portfolio naturally started to have more and more icon projects, and our know-how kept growing. This called for more icon commissions and one project led to another.