<p>[Free] Micro is built on a tiny 10px grid, perfect for interfaces. The Line variant offers minimal, clean strokes for small icon sizes. Licensed under the Creative Commons - CC BY 4.0</p>

<p>Built on a tiny 10px grid for maximum legibility. Ideal for navigation, buttons, and inline text icons in space-constrained designs.</p>

Micro

### **one sentence positioning**

Minimal shapes built for 10px — the only icon family designed specifically to behave like punctuation next to text.

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### **what it signals**

Precision, restraint, UI density mastery, typographic integration.

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### **best fit when**

- the UI is tight and text-heavy — tables, settings panels, inline actions, breadcrumbs
- icons must remain readable at 10–14px without any size increase
- icons need to coexist with text at cap-height without disrupting the reading line

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### **avoid when**

- icons must carry brand personality or visual expressiveness
- large hero icons, empty states, or marketing visuals are needed
- primary navigation requires larger, more expressive metaphors

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### **core visual rules**

- geometry: stripped to essential silhouette — only the minimum paths needed for recognition at 10px
- terminals: rounded — prevents sharp angle merging at high pixel density on small sizes
- corner language: minimal rounded logic for pixel clarity at minimum sizes
- curves: minimal — used only where essential for shape recognition, not for personality
- detail density: very low — zero decorative detail; visual skeleton only
- silhouette: essential, single-read — the scissors icon is blades-and-handles, not multi-segment precision
- emotional tension: very low — all design energy is directed at function, not expression

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### **variants and hierarchy**

Micro Line

- Maximum subtlety; works inline with text, dense tables, compact toolbars; the default state

Micro Solid

- Stronger presence in the same footprint; selected and active states, tiny badges, status indicators

**line/solid pairing rule** Use Micro Line for default states and Micro Solid for selected and active — this is the preferred state pattern rather than increasing text weight or changing icon size. Both variants hold legibility in the same 10–16px range.

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### **small-size behavior**

- recommended minimum size: 10px
- best range: 10–16px
- notes: Designed specifically to remain crisp where all other families fail — the 10px grid produces icons that hold their essential silhouette at the absolute minimum display size.

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### **motion behavior**

- strengths: stable scaling at minimum sizes, crisp opacity transitions with no visual noise
- ideal motion contexts: subtle UI feedback in dense surfaces, micro-interactions in compact toolbars, low-noise state transitions (Line to Solid) in data tables

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### **typography pairing**

UI-neutral workhorses

- Inter, Source Sans 3, IBM Plex Sans, Roboto, SF Pro Text, Segoe UI

Humanist clarity (warmer tone)

- Avenir Next, Calibre, Public Sans, Work Sans, Frutiger

Neo-grotesque systems (technical tone)

- Helvetica Now Text, Neue Haas Grotesk Text, Graphik, Aktiv Grotesk, Univers

**type alignment rule** Keep icon size close to the cap height of adjacent text. Avoid heavy type weights near Micro Line — the weight imbalance makes labels dominate and icons disappear. Use Micro Solid for selection emphasis rather than switching to bold text, which preserves visual balance.

**typefaces to avoid** Display fonts at any weight, hand-drawn or script fonts, highly decorative typefaces — the functional register of Micro requires type that shares its invisible-infrastructure philosophy.

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### **mixing guidance**

Recommended with

- Core — Micro handles the density layer while Core manages primary navigation
- Ultimate — same pattern; Micro for inline and table contexts, Ultimate for product chrome
- Sharp — Micro as the density specialist, Sharp as the primary technical UI system

Possible with normalization

- Nova — compatible neutral construction; normalize by keeping Micro strictly below 16px
- Flex — Flex carries the personality layer while Micro handles the density layer

Avoid mixing with

- Plump — the 48px construction is the opposite end of the scale spectrum from Micro's 10px grid
- Kameleon — flat illustration containers are a categorically different register
- Stickies — display-size sticker aesthetic is incompatible with Micro's typographic density role

**normalization rules when mixing**

- use Micro as a density layer only — tables, inline actions, compact chips — while another family handles navigation and primary UI
- avoid mixing Micro with high-detail families in the same component
- maintain consistent optical weight alongside text — Micro Line near regular body text, Micro Solid near medium or semibold labels

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### **primary use cases**

- inline text actions (edit, delete, share, open links)
- dense side panels, settings pages, and configuration forms
- data tables, column headers, and row-level actions
- tags, chips, filters, and compact input fields
- micro tooltips, breadcrumbs, and status indicators
- compact density modes in large enterprise design systems

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### **secondary use cases**

- subtle UI animation in tight layout contexts
- system tray and OS-adjacent UI chrome

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