simple-icons/CONTRIBUTING.md
Eric Cornelissen 2f42822167 Update CONTRIBUTING.md (#2377)
Given a recent comment on a rejected Pull Request I updated the 
Contributing Guidelines to explicitely state that adding a new icon in a 
Pull Request (without creating an issue first) is subject to the same 
requirements as an icon request by itself.
2020-01-16 12:06:13 +01:00

8.7 KiB

Contributing To Simple Icons

Simple Icons welcomes contributions and corrections. Before contributing, please make sure you have read the guidelines below. If you decide to contribute anything, please do the following:

  1. Fork this repository
  2. Create a new branch from the latest develop (read more here)
  3. Start hacking on the new branch
  4. Commit and push to the new branch
  5. Make a pull request

Table of contents

Requesting An Icon

We welcome icon requests. Before you submit a new issue please make sure the icon:

  • Has not already been requested.
  • Is of a popular brand. For websites, the Alexa rank should be less than 500k. For anything else, popularity will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
  • Isn't related to anything that provides an illegal service (e.g. piracy, malware, threatening material, spam, etc.).

If you are in doubt, feel free to submit it and we'll have a look.

When submitting a request for a new or updated icon include helpful information such as:

  • Issue Title: The brand name. For example:

    • New Icons: Request: GitHub Icon
    • Icon Updates: Update: GitHub Color or Update: GitHub Icon
  • Issue Body: Links to official sources for the brand's icon and colors (e.g. media kits, brand guidelines, SVG files etc.)

Adding or Updating An Icon

Note: If you decide to add an icon without requesting it first, the requirements above still apply.

1. Identify Official Logos and Colors

Most of the icons and brand colors on SimpleIcons have been derived from official sources. Using official sources helps ensure that the icons and colors in SimpleIcons accurately match the brand they represent. Thankfully, this is usually a simple process as organizations often provide brand guides and high quality versions of their logo for download.

Official high quality brand logos and brand colors can usually be found in the following locations:

  1. About pages, Press pages, Media Kits, and Brand Guidelines.
  2. Website headers (you can use svg-grabber for Chrome)
  3. Favicons
  4. Wikimedia (which should provide a source)

Working with an SVG version of the logo is best. In the absence of an SVG version, other vector filetypes may work as well (e.g. EPS, AI, PDF). In the absence of vector logos, a vector can be created from a high quality rasterized image, however this is much more labor intensive.

For color, the brand's primary color should be used. The official color of a brand is usually found in their brand guidelines, media kits, or some of the other locations mentioned above. If no official color can be identified, use the brand's primary web color or the most prominent color in the logo itself (please indicate why you choose the particular color in your pull request). Simple Icons stores brand colors in the standard 6 character hexadecimal format.

There are many different tools for editing SVG files, some options include:

Name Description Platform Price
Inkscape Vector Graphics Editor Windows, Mac, Linux Free
Adobe Illustrator Vector Graphics Editor Windows, Mac $ - $
IcoMoon Icon Editing/Management Tool Online Free

Using your preferred tool you should:

  1. Isolate the icon from any text or extraneous items.
  2. Change the icon's viewbox/canvas/page size to 24x24.
  3. Scale the icon to fit the viewbox, while preserving the icon's original proportions. This means the icon should be touching at least two sides of the viewbox.
  4. Center the icon horizontally and vertically.
  5. Remove all colors. The icon should be monochromatic.
  6. Export the icon as an SVG.

3. Optimize The Icon

All icons in Simple Icons have been optimized with the SVGO tool. This can be done in one of two ways:

  • The SVGO Command Line Tool
    • Install dependencies
      • With npm: npm install from the root of this repository
    • Run the following command npm run svgo -- icons/file-to-optimize.svg
    • Check if there is a loss of quality in the output, if so increase the precision.
  • The SVGOMG Online Tool
    • Click "Open SVG" and select an SVG file.
    • Set the precision to about 3, depending on if there is a loss of quality.
    • Leave the remaining settings untouched (or reset them with the button at the bottom of the settings).
    • Click the download button.

4. Annotate The Icon

Each icon in Simple Icons has been annotated with a number of attributes and elements to increase accessibility. These include:

  • An svg element with:
    • An img role attribute.
      • role="img"
    • A 24x24 viewbox.
      • viewBox="0 0 24 24"
    • The svg namespace.
      • xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  • A title element (Note the format).
    • <title>Adobe Photoshop icon</title>

Here is part of the svg for the Adobe Photoshop icon as an example:

<svg role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title>Adobe Photoshop icon</title>...</svg>

5. Check The Icon

The final icon should:

  • Be properly annotated as discussed above.
  • Be monochromatic.
    • Remove all fill colors so that icon defaults to black.
  • Be scaled to fit the viewbox, while preserving the icon's original proportions.
    • This means the icon should be touching at least two sides of the viewbox.
  • Be vertically and horizontally centered.
  • Be minified to a single line with no formatting.
  • Contain only a single path element.
  • Not contain extraneous elements.
    • This includes: circ, ellipse, rect, polygon, line, g, etc.
  • Not contain extraneous attributes.
    • This includes: width, height, fill, stroke, clip, font, etc.

Here is the svg for the Adobe Photoshop icon as an example:

<svg role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><title>Adobe Photoshop icon</title><path d="M0 .3v23.4h24V.3H0zm1 1h22v21.4H1V1.3zm4.8 4.48c0-.067.14-.116.224-.116.644-.033 1.588-.05 2.578-.05 2.772 0 3.85 1.52 3.85 3.466 0 2.54-1.842 3.63-4.102 3.63-.38 0-.51-.017-.775-.017v3.842c0 .083-.033.116-.115.116H5.916c-.083 0-.115-.03-.115-.113V5.78zm1.775 5.312c.23.016.412.016.81.016 1.17 0 2.27-.412 2.27-1.996 0-1.27-.786-1.914-2.122-1.914-.396 0-.775.016-.957.033v3.864zm8.607-1.188c-.792 0-1.056.396-1.056.726 0 .363.18.61 1.237 1.155 1.568.76 2.062 1.485 2.062 2.557 0 1.6-1.22 2.46-2.87 2.46-.876 0-1.62-.183-2.05-.43-.065-.033-.08-.082-.08-.165V14.74c0-.1.048-.133.114-.084.624.413 1.352.594 2.012.594.792 0 1.122-.33 1.122-.776 0-.363-.23-.677-1.237-1.205-1.42-.68-2.014-1.37-2.014-2.527 0-1.287 1.006-2.36 2.755-2.36.86 0 1.464.132 1.794.28.082.05.1.132.1.198v1.37c0 .083-.05.133-.15.1-.444-.264-1.1-.43-1.743-.43z"/></svg>

6. Update The JSON Data For SimpleIcons.org

Icon metadata should be added to the _data/simple-icons.json file. Each icon in the array has three required values:

  • The title of the new SVG.
  • A hex color value that matches the brand's primary color. All uppercase and without the # pound symbol.)
  • The source URL of the logo being used. This is used to find updates if the logo ever changes.

Here is the object for The Movie Database as an example:

{
    "title": "The Movie Database",
    "hex": "01D277",
    "source": "https://www.themoviedb.org/about/logos-attribution"
}

Make sure the icon is added in alphabetical order. If you're in doubt, you can always run npm run our-lint - this will tell you if any of the JSON data is in the wrong order.

7. Create a pull request

Once you've completed the previous steps, create a pull request to merge your edits into the develop branch.

Building Locally

  • Make sure you have Ruby installed.
  • Make sure you have Jekyll installed (using $ gem install jekyll bundler).
  • Build and run the website locally using $ jekyll serve.
  • Connect to the website in your browser via the "Server address" provided by the output of this command, e.g. http://localhost:4000/

Building In Your Browser

Alternatively, you can build and run the website in a readily configured online workspace:

Open in Gitpod