Investigate need for status icons not related to pipelines
What
A few recent requests have a need for icons that represent the status of an object. It could be beneficial to have a subset of icons specifically for status that don’t need to leverage those used for the pipeline. The pipeline icons are created with a different grid, and will likely be updated as a set in the future, so anchoring on them would have negative downstream impact.
There are icons in the library that can be shoehorned into just about any scenario, but this is not ideal and can lead to mixed metaphors later, even though context should help clarify meaning at the point of use.
The ask
Would you find an icon subset helpful that is specific to an object’s status? For example, the status of runners in gitlab-org/gitlab#225923 (closed), or the status of importing groups and project in gitlab-org/gitlab#271505 (closed).
Considerations
- A separate, smaller 12px grid similar to what is used for the severity icons (By default all icons in the library are shown at 16px, even though they may have been created with a separate grid. A separate proposal has been created so that 12px is a preview option.).
- Solid shapes with negative space when necessary instead of outlines which could be hard to decipher at the smaller size. This would also help them be a stronger visual anchor, but one that doesn’t have as much presence as a larger icon would.
- The icons would be complimentary and in most cases require text or other contextual cues to give them meaning. In other words, we don’t just want them relying on color or shape due to the smaller size. With this approach, the icons could be considered “decorational,” where meaning can de derived from context and not 100% reliant on the icon.
- In most cases the icons would also have prescribed color to consistently enforce meaning.
- At this small size, these should not be interactive, but can be contained within a larger interactive element.
- Optical balance and equal visual weight.
Potential status
- Active/Online
- Inactive/Offline
- Paused
- Stopped/Cancelled
- Alert/Failed
- Complete/Success
- In progress/Running
- Scheduled
- Being scheduled
- Waiting/Not started
- …
Rough concept
Inspiration
- The severity icons created by @andyvolpe.
- Stack Overflow’s smaller icons https://github.com/StackExchange/Stacks-Icons.