Icons

How icons work at Aleris

Icons carry information, not identity. They communicate a concept in an instant, and an icon is often at its best when it goes unnoticed — it simply works. What keeps them coherent across everything Aleris makes is consistency of style: we draw from one icon family and hold to a single style within any given product, rather than mixing weights or swapping in icons from elsewhere. That visual steadiness is what reads as considered and trustworthy — the common thread that runs through the work without asking to be seen.

How freely we interpret and play with icons varies by context. The same icon can be right in an internal workshop deck and wrong in a patient letter — not because the medium differs, but because the cost of being misread differs: high for a patient, low for a colleague. So Aleris sorts icon use into four contexts: patient-facing, internal digital tools, presentations and internal material, and signage and wayfinding. The context decides which icons are allowed; the consequence of getting it wrong decides how strict the selection is.

Underneath all four sits a short, constant floor: things we never use — weapons, logos, religious symbols, anything aggressive or alarmist — because they don't fit the Present Expert in any context. Everything above that floor is a question of context, and the table below is the calibration.

What icons do — and don't do

Navigation — where do I go?

The icon helps people navigate to the right place or content. As a rule it lives in digital services, where icons have specific roles that follow established conventions — an arrow, a map pin, a flag. Counter-example: icons where the navigational link is something you invented yourself, such as a walking person.

Status — what's happening here?

The icon helps people understand what's going on in a context. As a rule it lives in digital services, following established conventions — an open or closed envelope, a play or stop symbol, a checkmark that something is done. Counter-example: an arrow (navigation), a map (an object with no status value), or weather icons (outside the weather context).

Category — what is this?

The icon aids scanning and visual support. It can make a list surveyable without reading every row — an icon per specialty in a list, or icons for document types. Counter-example: icons used in the navigation, status, or action roles.

In the icon picker's vocabulary, the category role is the identity icon (what a thing is); navigation, status, and action are interface icons.

Action — what does this do?

Icons that help people grasp "here is a choice" and set expectations for where it leads. Though less tightly governed by convention than navigation and status, it is still more constrained than category. Icons from the other roles can be action icons when the action is tied to the icon's meaning in the same service — three horizontal lines for a menu, an empty or filled checkbox, a plus or minus, a chevron to open or close. Counter-example: an aeroplane as a symbol for "send" (though a paper plane is established).

Illustration

We also use icons to enrich a poster or presentation visually. There they can be modified, filled with images, or used as they are.

Four contexts

It is the context that decides the rules, not the medium or the audience in itself. The consequence of a mistake within a context shapes how strict the rules are — so a patient brochure built in PowerPoint belongs to the patient-facing context, not to presentations.

The model is built on a principle: add friction where mistakes are expensive, stay permissive where they are cheap. The table is a guiding calibration, not a rulebook.

	Patient-facing	Internal digital tools	Presentations & internal material	Signage & wayfinding
Examples	aleris.se, MyAleris, patient guides, brochures, letters — digital and print	Qlik dashboards, admin tools, internal systems	Workshop decks, internal documents, working material	Signs and orientation in facilities
Style	Outline, one weight	Outline preferred	Outline, solid and duotone allowed	Convention-led
Role	Functional only (navigation, status, category, action)	Functional	Functional + illustrative/decorative	Navigation only
Cost of a mistake	Trust, accessibility, comprehension — expensive	Internal, correctable — moderate	Low	Orientation and safety — highest

Exceptions in internal tools — two kinds of breach

The generous allowlist for internal tools (the Qlik picker is the reference implementation) rules out two categories:

Floor breaches — logos, weapons, religious symbols. These follow from the floor and apply in every context.
Function breaches — number icons. In a dashboard they compete with actual data and risk becoming the sole carrier of meaning; in a presentation they are unproblematic.

Duotone in presentations and internal material

Duotone is bound to two petrol steps — never arbitrary pairs, never across colour families. The exact steps are given in baseline (schemas/icon-allowlist-entry.md).

What we never use

A short list is out in every context, however permissive: weapons, logos and trademarks, religious symbols, and anything aggressive or alarmist. These don't belong to the Present Expert anywhere — it isn't that the setting is wrong, it's that the motif itself is off.

Beyond that floor, fit is a matter of context, not a separate test. Whether an icon's expression suits the moment — a playful icon that's right in a workshop deck and wrong on a patient page, the same icon — is decided by the context it sits in. The four contexts set how much expressive latitude you have; that's where fit is judged.

Constant and contextual

Constant — what always applies

One consistent style. One source family (Font Awesome Pro), and within any single product one weight — never outline, solid and duotone mixed on the same surface. This consistency is what makes icons cohere as Aleris.
The floor: weapons, logos, religious symbols, aggressive or alarmist motifs — never, in any context.
An icon that carries a specific meaning always appears with a label (decorative icons in the presentation context excepted).
Colour from the palette only — icons never introduce their own.

Contextual — what adapts per context

Style: which styles are permitted — outline, solid, duotone — widens or narrows by context.
Role: functional or illustrative.
Governance: the context's mechanism (see the table) — a reviewed list, a generous list, the floor alone, or an external wayfinding standard (established practice for evacuation, accessibility, direction, ISO 7001).

Governance per context

Each context gets the lightest governance that still handles the risk if something goes wrong. The more expensive a mistake, the more friction we add.

Patient-facing has the strictest selection. The cost of an error is highest here — trust, accessibility, comprehension — so editors choose icons from a reviewed allowlist rather than freely. The friction is the point: it forces a deliberate choice. The list is owned by Head of Design.

Internal digital tools get a generous selection list. Errors here are internal and fixable, and we don't want to slow down the people building the tools. The list rules out only what the floor already excludes and the function breaches that have been decided (e.g. number icons in data-dense views).

Presentations and internal material manage without a selection list. The floor and the short blocklist are enough.

Signage and wayfinding is the strictest, and is governed differently from the other three. Here Aleris does not choose from its own list but follows established wayfinding standards (ISO 7001, ISO 7010, accessibility symbols) that we do not own. The selection is defined together with the Physical chapter.

So three contexts choose from Aleris's own lists, and a fourth follows an external standard.

An icon allowed in one context is not automatically allowed in another. That a tool has given an icon a local meaning — an app icon in Qlik, say — creates no rule outside that tool.

The patient-facing list lives in data-products/iconography/allowlist.json, with a visualisation at baseline/iconography/index.html.

What our icons are not

Our icons do not use colours outside our palette.
Our icons are not used decoratively in digital interfaces; a decorative icon must clearly be part of content or background graphics.

(The "aggressive or alarmist" exclusion that used to sit here now lives in the floor — kept in one place to avoid stating it three times. Confirm on your pass.)

Quick test

Before you place an icon:

Which context are you in? Audience and situation decide which icons may be used.
Does the icon clear the floor, and does its expression fit this context?
Does the icon mean something specific? Then the recipient needs to understand exactly what you mean — does it have a label?

Consistently using icons from the same family is important for a visually coherent identity. Holding a clear distinction between functional and aesthetic use of icons is crucial to clear communication. This is not a matter of taste or preference, but foundational to being a professional and trustworthy business. It's part of our signature.