Great to see your thinking there Eoghan. I love the history of type… makes me think of a couple of things.

Ligatures are traditionally combinations of letters, like ‘ft’ that can called to return one glyph. So really, you’ve used the idea in the correct way. It was originally used by printers to save time on placing each individual glyph for words with frequently used character combinations, e.g. “th”, “st”, “ft”.

We don’t use ligatures so much these days because printing is now efficient. Therefore, we struggle to interpret them. So an interesting fact… the word ‘Ye’ as in “Ye Olde” is simply is a ligature of “The”. In fact, it was never intended as a word, and never used as a word.

From my experience icon inconsistency comes from a lack of engagement around the idea of ‘design standards’, its actually because people don’t realise the reasons for icons coming about.

At an organisation the size of google, it is amazing that everyone uses the same icon set and design language. I think we will agree the design language is non-standard at Facebook and results in a hugely inconsistent experience.

My experience with designers (regardless of seniority!) is that they relish the chance of designing their own icon set; it encompasses craft, communication, illustration and most of all a chance to embed their own personality into a product.

The only problem is that it really is like inventing a new language and is a huge undertaking. Many designers don’t see that when they start out.