In 2012, Germany's biggest social network consisting of studiVZ, meinVZ, and schülerVZ was completely redesigned. In addition to the adjustments of color palettes and previously used icons, we also needed default images to be displayed in the so called 'Social Topics' (a relaunch of platform groups). Together with the marketing department the product owner made up new category names by which I was inspired to create new images.
Given a list of approximately 25 terms, I started looking for recognized symbols. But of course I also did some research on competitors and seeked out for inspiration on the internet.
In the end we launched less than 20 categories to make any decision easier for our users while creating a new group.
