The Judgment Criteria of a Designer Who Made 600 Cursor Icons
1. Turning small icons into one system
Marek Minor hand-drew more than 600 dedicated Cursor icons over the course of a year.
- He replaced the existing VS Code codicon set and designed two sizes and two styles.
- He handled both the completeness of individual icons and the consistency of the full set.
2. Finding recognizable forms in unfamiliar concepts
Features with no visual convention, such as Agent and MCP, begin with understanding their meaning.
- He researched existing expressions and metaphors, comparing options from concrete to abstract.
- Bugbot is a case that layers the meanings of bug, crosshair, and slash.
- He explored 156 options for the hamburger icon.
- Only after the system rules were set did the questions to be resolved in the next icon decrease.
3. Exploring alone, deciding direction together
He created time for focused work and a shared format the team could use to make decisions.
- He shared the results of his exploration in private files through shared files and recorded videos.
- Feedback from design lead Ryo and the team was concentrated early on, and then decreased as the direction became clearer.
- Trust and autonomy were maintained from the start of the project.
4. A designer expanding production scope with AI
He drew the icons himself, and used AI to expand thinking and implementation.
- It was used for metaphor exploration, a delivery site, migration dashboards, and prototype production.
- He saw himself as a conductor coordinating multiple tools.
- Even after delivery, he continues to be responsible for new icons and visual consistency.
