Overview
McAfee is one of the largest computer security companies in the world, a household name with nearly 6,000 employees. A recent branding initiative brought unity to the organization’s marketing, collateral and visual identity but with one persistently visible omission: iconography.
Every application used its own set of iconography, some of it retained from an era of 16 color displays and 640 by 480 resolutions. The time was right to set in motion a widespread and coherent revision. In collaboration with the McAfee Design Studio and the branding team in Santa Clara, California, I created a set of guidelines for the creation of application icons (those that represent distinct software suites) and notification states (as seen in the Windows notification area or “system tray” and Mac menu bar).
In addition to the usual iconographic challenges associated with readability at small sizes and versatility in increasingly high-resolution applications, this project came with a unique series of hurdles in order to harmonize with established branding guidelines. These included:
- Establish a connection with the shield present in the McAfee Secure for Websites badge (viewed by millions each and every day), as well as an unobstructed “M”
- Develop extensible guidelines that avoid literal security imagery (such as padlocks and safes) as well as media imagery (CD-ROMs, hard drives) which could become obsolete
- Create a small set of notification icons to accompany the primary application icon in the user’s notification area
- Separate the color red as used in the shield from red as a symbol of risk
- Avoid the lack of scalability common in large software suites
The triangular badge was redrawn to maximize pixel usage and take advantage of contemporary displays; it should look great on a Windows 7 desktop or Mac OS X dock. Comparable versions were created for lower color depths, and a special sixteen-pixel version was created from scratch for maximum clarity.
The center of the shield can occupy either the McAfee “M” or an abstract symbol representing the function of the application. It is important that these symbols feel like the product more than literally represent it, maximizing simplicity and outrunning obsolescence.
Smaller emblems accompany the icon in cases where the product needs to notify the user of something from the Windows tray or Mac menu bar. The most common of these emblems are “at risk” and “progress,” the latter with a radial animation to acknowledge the passage of time. States representing risk or potential risk are accompanied by a desaturated shield, decreasing the prominence of the McAfee brand and signifying its diminished effectiveness until action is taken.
Users should begin to see these icons in select Enterprise and Small & Medium Business applications released in the Summer of 2009 (such as ePolicy Orchestrator), with a gradual rollout affecting all other products thereafter.