I wanted to share some things that have been thought about during the beginnings of this work.

• While considering the ease of creating and contributing icons, we are leaning toward relying on documentation than a "simpler" icon style. An example is using more rounded shapes, ends, and corners, whose radius can differ in one icon depending on the angle, instead of just resulting to everything being squared off.
• A rounded icon style is feeling more approachable, fresh, and flexible.
• While we want to ensure as much visible clarity in icons at small sizes, it is next to impossible to design all icons to not have any parts that fall on a sub or partial pixel. We also recognize that the majority of people use relatively high resolution screens these days.
• Currently, the icon set is a mix of filled and stroked icons, with strokes being primarily 2px in width, but sometimes 1px. We want to make this style more intentional, cohesive, and consistent, to help promote visual balance. Some icons are naturally stroked, like the plus or 'x'/cancel symbol.
  • Making all icons stroked by default allows us to create the visual balance we desire, while being able to adapt all existing and new shapes to such a style. It also allows us to utilize a filled icon style sparingly, where we need to show a certain state of the icon, like selected or something that needs extra attention, like a notification, or something that we want to promote more, like the edit icon.
• We recognize with any visible change like this, there will be an initial natural reaction of potential resistance because it is simply something that is changing. But we believe that this change is the right move forward because the consistency of a visual element like icons helps build subconscious trust in the overall platform.

Below is an example of the progress thus far, using the Insert menu within Visual Editor to show the variety of icons.

before	after

Two other (small) issues that could be fixed:

• SpeechBubbleAdd has inconsistent proportions compared to other speech bubbles (namely, it doesn't fill the whole icon space). That inconsistency is pretty visible when used side-by-side or when one switches to the other, and should be an easy fix.
• While most letters are not in the above list, Bold Arab Ain is currently in a different style compared to other bold Arab characters, being more calligraphic and with tapered instead of squared ends.

More general comment: the "After" overrelies on thin outlines and might be worse for accessibility (and from a design standpoint) comparing to the bolder, filled shapes we currently have. I'd be down for a redesign of some of the current shapes (such as the fixes I outlined above) for more consistency and readability, but a change of this magnitude is not necessary or helpful in my opinion.

Thanks for the feedback and your opinion @Chaotic_Enby! If you look at the broad spectrum of icons, you'll find a lot of inconsistencies both stylistically and visible weight. This task sets out to fix that. The outlined style is something we've been discussing as well. From that most recent version, we're thinking of trying a slightly thicker weight of the outline (likely 2px, similar to many of the current outlined ones), as this redesigned version (1.5px) feels too similar to the weight of the text that icons typically accompany, especially in latin characters.

As far as the outlined style in general goes, many of the icons by nature are outlined, like the plus, checkmark, arrows, search, among many others. Combining those outline ones with filled icons tend to shine more visual light on the filled ones, because they are "heavier". Most times, this is unintentional, and a result of the existing icon design. Instead, if we opt to use outlined icons for all icons, the visual weight on any given screen is more distributed. We are then able to more thoughtfully use the filled version of icons to indicate a certain status, like selected or give certain ones more intentional weight, such as the edit icon.

This is still an experiment, and we will continue iterating on these ideas. More updates will be posted. We appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

Just providing an update on the latest progress and feedback here. The last update featured a 1.5px stroke width. Through testing we found that this width blended in a little too much with latin characters, such as on English Wikipedia. In this latest exploration we are returning to a 2px stroke width, which draws a bit more attention to the icons themselves and stands apart from the text a bit more. 2px stroke width is also what is primarily used currently, so this is less of a departure from the existing icon design. With the bolder width, we need to keep in mind where certain areas of particular icons become more visually dense, and need to be lightened up a bit. In this version, we are also leaning more into filling icons where they feel they should be filled, to convey status or a certain importance, such as in adding a citation or editing.

We will continue exploring ideas, pushing the balance between outlined and filled, and sharp and soft angles.

Thanks a lot! Making sure I understand correctly, does that mean some icons will, in the future, have both an outline version and a filled version depending on the user's needs?

@Chaotic_Enby yes, that's the current concept/plan.

An update on the icon redesigns progress. The style has come full circle back to much of it's most common original state — 2px stroke width and mostly sharp edges. Rounded edges are used where it feels natural and an element loses its recognizability when squared off, such as a puzzle piece. We are still leaning into a primarily outlined style, which enables us to use a filled style for icons which require various states, such as "watch" and "watched" in reference to the star icon and adding an article to your watchlist, and icons we want to intentionally draw a bit more attention to, such as "edit" or "error".

What feels good about this latest variation of styling is that it feels the most similar to the current style of icons, but drastically and positively rebalances the weight and intentionality of attention on icons. This direction feels like the least amount of departure from the current state of icons, which should help with the transition to the new library.

At this point, about half of the icon library has been redesigned.

Checking in, I really like these! I especially like the ability to intentionally balance the weight of the icons. The only worry I'm having is regarding the more detailed icons, such as the "references" one, which in the current style might be a bit hard to maintain as separate filled and outlined icons. All in all, really great work, keep it up!