Enterprise Icon System for Aveva Engineering Software
A large-scale software icon system developed in collaboration with Aveva’s UX team, supporting thousands of custom software icons across multiple engineering platforms. The project focused on building a scalable design system and production workflow capable of managing a growing icon library across more than twenty complex industrial software applications.
Client:
Aveva
Project Scope:
1,800+ Icons in Current System
5,000+ Icons Delivered Since 2012
20+ Engineering Software Applications
3 Icon Style Variants
SVG Icons with CSS Control
24px & 32px Icon System
Aveva wanted a custom style based on Google Material Icons but expanded to allow for thousands of their own technical tools and concepts
Building an Enterprise Icon System
AVEVA develops industrial engineering software used worldwide across energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing sectors. As the company expanded through acquisitions and product development, its software ecosystem grew to include dozens of specialised applications with different interface conventions.
To create a consistent user experience across this expanding platform, Aveva’s UX team initiated a programme to standardise iconography across its engineering software portfolio. Creative Freedom partnered with the team to develop a scalable icon system capable of supporting thousands of custom software icons while maintaining strict visual consistency.
The engagement built upon a long-standing collaboration between Creative Freedom and Aveva, which began in 2004 and has since delivered more than 5000 software icons across multiple generations of engineering applications.
Image courtesy of AVEVA Solutions Ltd
Managing Thousands of Icons
Large software platforms require more than icon design. They require structured production workflows capable of supporting thousands of assets while maintaining consistency over many years of development.
To support this scale, Creative Freedom developed Icon Manager, a dedicated platform for organising large icon libraries and managing collaboration between designers and UX teams.
Icon Manager tracks versions, manages multiple icon styles and sizes, and allows UX teams to review, comment, and approve icons in a centralised system. This workflow ensures that even very large icon libraries remain organised and easy to maintain as software evolves.
Icon Manager allows enterprise UX teams to manage thousands of software icons with full revision tracking and collaborative feedback.
Designing a Scalable Icon Language
The icon system is based on a refined Material-inspired design language, adapted specifically for engineering software environments. While Material icons provide a useful geometric foundation, industrial software requires many specialised metaphors not found in standard icon libraries.
Working closely with Aveva’s UX team, Creative Freedom extended the icon language with new glyphs and structural rules to support complex workflows including data modelling, plant design, simulation tools, and system configuration. This is where a structured approach to custom software icons becomes essential.
The system also introduced an additional 32px icon size alongside the standard 24px Material grid, ensuring improved legibility in dense engineering toolbars and high-information interfaces where clarity is essential.
Supporting Multiple Interface Styles
Aveva required three related sub styles within the icon system, helping the library adapt to different UI requirements while remaining visually consistent.
To support a wider range of interface requirements across Aveva’s software products, the icon system includes three closely related visual sub styles.
These styles allow the same core metaphor to be adapted consistently across different parts of the UI while remaining aligned with the wider design system. In practice, this gives Aveva more flexibility when applying icons across a large and evolving software estate.
The SVG assets were also carefully structured so that key elements, such as stroke and filled areas, could be controlled independently in software. This allows the UI to respond more easily to light and dark themes, highlighted states, and other interface conditions without needing separate icon redraws for every scenario.
Combined with a tightly managed style guide and review process, this approach helps keep the icon library coherent, scalable, and ready for long term use across complex engineering applications, which is exactly what we aim to achieve in our custom icon design projects.
Need an Enterprise Icon System?
Creative Freedom specialises in designing scalable icon systems for complex software platforms.
Our team has delivered thousands of icons for engineering, scientific, and industrial software used worldwide.
If your product requires a consistent icon language across hundreds or thousands of interface elements,
we can help build a system that scales with your software.
Contact our icon design team
Let’s talk about your project — we’re happy to help.
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