We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Noun Studio—a specialized icon editor and generator that delivers precise, consistent results for icons that visually match, while compensating the human designers whose work is used as a reference.
Here’s how it works and what it means for our Icon Creators.
Table of Contents
What Is Noun Studio?
Noun Studio is a specialized icon editor and generator designed to help customers edit existing icons and generate new icons that visually match.
Every edited or generated icon begins with an existing, human-created icon from Noun Project’s collection.
Customers select an icon as a visual reference and use text prompts to:
- Adjust line weight and style
- Add color fills and colorful details
- Add, remove, or refine visual details
- Change the subject or composition
- Generate new icons in the same visual style
- Build cohesive matching icon sets
For example, a customer could start by generating a parrot icon using the style of the pigeon above, then ask Noun Studio to generate a matching monkey. From there, they could continue refining the monkey with additional prompts—such as showing it holding a banana, making the line weight thinner, or adding color—all while preserving the visual language established by the original reference icon.
How Creators Earn With Noun Studio
Noun Studio creates a new way to earn from icons you’ve already contributed.
Customers purchase Noun Studio credits to edit and generate icons. When a customer downloads an icon that uses one of your participating icons as a reference, you earn 60% of Net Revenue as royalties from that download.
Customers can explore and refine multiple variations in Noun Studio. Throughout that process, provenance preserves the connection to your original icon. Even after multiple rounds of editing or generation, your original human-created icon remains associated with the resulting work so you can still earn a royalty when it is downloaded.
Customers can also build visually consistent icon sets by generating multiple icons from the same reference icon. If your icon is used as the reference for that set, you can earn royalties on each generated icon that is downloaded.
This creates an additional earning opportunity beyond the royalties you already receive from downloads of your existing icons.
Your Noun Studio earnings will appear in your Creator Dashboard alongside your other Noun Project royalties. Payments will be issued through the existing PayPal payout process once your balance reaches the standard payout threshold.
Creator Participation Is Optional
Your eligible icons will be available for use in Noun Studio unless you choose to opt out through your Creator Dashboard.
You can update your participation preference by opting in or out at any time. Customers will also be able to see when an icon is not available for use in Noun Studio.
Using Noun Studio is also entirely optional for customers. It offers an additional way to edit and generate icons—it is not a replacement for Noun Project’s existing collection or products.
What Makes Noun Studio Different
We know generative technology raises important questions in creative work, especially for the artists whose work has helped build Noun Project.
Noun Studio was designed to give customers new capabilities while continuing to support the human creators behind Noun Project.
Specialized for Icon Design
Most general-purpose image generators begin with a text prompt and produce a broad range of imagery. Because Noun Studio is specialized for icons, it gives customers greater precision, consistency, and control when editing icons, generating matching icons, and expanding icon sets.
Noun Studio is designed around the specific qualities that make icons effective: clear concepts, simple compositions, consistent line weights, cohesive visual styles, and usability at different sizes.
It makes customization more accessible to customers who may not have professional design skills or specialized software. If one of your icons is close to what a customer needs, they can adapt it instead of continuing their search—creating a new opportunity for your work to generate royalties where it may not have been possible otherwise.
Every Result Begins With a Human-Created Icon
Every edited or generated icon begins with an original icon created by a Noun Project creator.
This foundation gives customers a way to customize a human-created icon or generate a visually matching result while ensuring that the original creator remains connected to the process.
Provenance preserves the connection between the resulting work and the original human-created reference icon, even after multiple variations. When a resulting icon is downloaded, the original creator is compensated.
Importantly, Noun Project did not train an image generation model using Creator’s icons. Instead, Noun Studio uses a combination of internally developed knowledge from 15 years of working with and perfecting icon design and SVGs, along with third-party models selected for different tasks.
Noun Project’s Icon Collection Will Remain Human-Created
Icons edited or generated with Noun Studio are never added to Noun Project’s icon collection and cannot be submitted as creator uploads.
Each Noun Studio icon is licensed to the customer who generated it and stored privately in that customer’s account. Noun Project does not publicly share icons generated with Noun Studio.
Our submission policy has not changed. Submitting content generated in Noun Studio to Noun Project’s icon collection is not permitted under our Terms of Use.
Noun Project’s icon collection will continue to consist solely of original work created and submitted by human designers, and reviewed by our human moderators.
How Customers Can Use Icons Generated With Noun Studio
Customers can use icons edited or generated with Noun Studio in products, presentations, websites, applications, design systems, and other creative projects.
Icons may be downloaded as PNG or SVG files, depending on the customer’s account and purchase. SVG files can also be edited further in tools such as Figma or Illustrator.
Customers may not resell icons generated with Noun Studio as stock assets, submit them to stock marketplaces, or upload them to Noun Project’s icon collection. All icons must be used in accordance with Noun Project’s Terms of Use.
Customer prompts and generated results are not publicly shared. They may be stored for moderation, abuse prevention, enforcement, and operational review.
Building With Our Creators
We want to thank the creators who helped shape our approach. During development, we interviewed several Noun Project creators and walked them through our early concepts for Noun Studio. Their feedback helped define the principles at the center of the product: creator compensation, provenance, and creator choice.
Technology is rapidly changing the creative landscape. Through exit surveys, customers are increasingly telling us they’re turning to generative tools to meet their icon needs. But general-purpose image generators often produce generic and inconsistent results, and they don’t support or compensate the creative community whose work helped shape the visual world they draw from.
Our goal is to give customers a better option when they need to edit or generate icons—one that produces higher-quality results while creating new earning opportunities for the designers behind Noun Project’s collection. We hope that by offering Noun Studio as an alternative, we can keep our collection of art-quality, human-created icons relevant as customer needs evolve and strengthen the creative community that has made Noun Project possible.
If you have questions about Noun Studio, please contact us at info@thenounproject.com or visit our Creator FAQs for more information.
Dancing Icon by Smashing Stocks
Pigeon Icon by Fauzi Arts
Hand-drawn face icons by Aiden Regalado
