Add-in commands add buttons, text, and icons to the Office UI. Your add-in command buttons should provide meaningful icons and labels that clearly identify the action the user is taking when they use a command. This article provides stylistic and production guidelines that help you design icons that integrate seamlessly with Office.
The Office 2013 release of the Office desktop clients includes refreshed iconography. The overriding stylistic change is reduction. The new icons include only essential communicative elements. Non-essential elements including perspective, gradients, and light source are removed. The simplified icons support faster parsing of commands and controls. Follow this style to best fit with Office.
Office icons are based on the following design principles:
Modern interpretation of Office icon collection
Fresh yet familiar
Simple, clear, and direct
The following image shows icons that apply the modern design principles.
Follow these guidelines when you create your icons:
Stick to the 1px grid and use a bitmap editing tool for best results.
Redraw, don't resize. As you resize your icons for larger or smaller sizes, take the time to redraw cutouts, corners, and rounded edges to maximize line clarity.
Remove artifacts that make your icon look messy.
Don't reuse Office UI Fabric icons in the Office ribbon or contextual menu. Fabric icons are stylistically different and will not match.
Avoid relying on your logo or brand to communicate what an add-in command does. Brand marks aren't always recognizable at smaller icon sizes and when modifiers are applied. Brand marks often conflict with Office ribbon icon styles, and can compete for user attention in a saturated environment.
Use a white fill for accessibility. Most objects in your icons will require a white background to be legible across Office UI themes and in high-contrast modes.
Use the PNG format with a transparent background.
Avoid localizable content in your icons, including typographic characters, indications of paragraph rags, and question marks.
Don't reuse visual metaphors for different commands. Using the same icon for different actions can cause confusion.
Make your button labels clear and succinct. Use a combination of visual and textual information to convey meaning.
Office 2016 desktop icons are bitmap images. Different sizes will render depending on the user's DPI setting and touch mode. Include all eight supported sizes to create the best experience in all supported resolutions and contexts. The following are the supported sizes - three are required:
16 px (Required)
20 px
24 px
32 px (Required)
40 px
48 px
64 px (Recommended, best for Mac)
80 px (Required)
Make sure to redraw your icons for each size rather than shrink them to fit.
Office icons are typically comprised of a base element with action and conceptual modifiers overlayed. Action modifiers represent concepts such as add, open, new, or close. Conceptual modifiers represent status, alteration, or a description of the icon.
To create commands that align with the Office UI, follow layout guidelines for the base element and modifiers. This ensures that your commands look professional and that your customers will trust your add-in. If you make exceptions to these guidelines, do so intentionally.
The following image shows the layout of base elements and modifiers in an Office icon.
Center base elements in the pixel frame with empty padding all around.
Place action modifiers on the top left.
Place conceptual modifiers on the bottom right.
Limit the number of elements in your icons. At 32px, limit the number of modifiers to a maximum of two. At 16px, limit the number of modifiers to one.
Place base elements consistently across sizes. If base elements can't be centered in the frame, align them to the top left, leaving the extra pixels on the bottom right. For best results, apply the padding guidelines listed in the following table.
Icon size
Padding around base element
16px
20px
1px
24px
32px
2px
40px
48px
3px
64px
5px
80px
All modifiers should have a 1px transparent cutout between each element, including the background. Elements should not directly overlap. Create whitespace between rules and edges. Modifiers can vary slightly in size, but use these dimensions as a starting point.
Modifier size
9px
10px
12px
14px
22px
29px
38px
Office icons have a limited color palette. Use the colors listed in the following table to guarantee seamless integration with the Office UI. Apply the following guidelines to the use of color:
Use color to communicate meaning rather than for embellishment. It should highlight or emphasize an action, status, or an element that explicitly differentiates the mark.
If possible, use only one additional color beyond gray. Limit additional colors to two at the most.
Colors should have a consistent appearance in all icon sizes. Office icons have slightly different color palettes for different icon sizes. 16px and smaller icons are slightly darker and more vibrant than 32px and larger icons. Without these subtle adjustments, colors appear to vary across sizes.
Color name
RGB
Hex
Color
Category
Text Gray (80)
80, 80, 80
#505050
Text
Text Gray (95)
95, 95, 95
#5F5F5F
Text Gray (105)
105, 105, 105
#696969
Dark Gray 32
128, 128, 128
#808080
32 and above
Medium Gray 32
158, 158, 158
#9E9E9E
Light Gray ALL
179, 179, 179
#B3B3B3
All sizes
Dark Gray 16
114, 114, 114
#727272
16 and below
Medium Gray 16
144, 144, 144
#909090
Blue 32
77, 130, 184
#4d82B8
Blue 16
74, 125, 177
#4A7DB1
Yellow ALL
234, 194, 130
#EAC282
Orange 32
231, 142, 70
#E78E46
Orange 16
227, 142, 70
#E3751C
Pink ALL
230, 132, 151
#E68497
Green 32
118, 167, 151
#76A797
Green 16
104, 164, 144
#68A490
Red 32
216, 99, 68
#D86344
Red 16
214, 85, 50
#D65532
Purple 32
152, 104, 185
#9868B9
Purple 16
137, 89, 171
#8959AB
Office icons are designed to render well in high contrast modes. Foreground elements are well differentiated from backgrounds to maximize legibility and enable recoloring. In high contrast modes, Office will recolor any pixel of your icon with a red, green, or blue value less than 190 to full black. All other pixels will be white. In other words, each RGB channel is assessed where 0-189 values are black and 190-255 values are white. Other high-contrast themes recolor using the same 190 value threshold but with different rules. For example, the high-contrast white theme will recolor all pixels greater than 190 opaque but all other pixels as transparent. Apply the following guidelines to maximize legibility in high-contrast settings:
Aim to differentiate foreground and background elements along the 190 value threshold.
Follow Office icon visual styles.
Use colors from our icon palette.
Avoid the use of gradients.
Avoid large blocks of color with similar values.
Add-in development best practices
Add-in commands for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint