Guidelines for graphical menus  

• Menu items (= "icons") should be recognizable and distinguishable within the normal viewing distance, under different light conditions.
• Should be esthetically pleasing
  
  
• Global properties (like form, color or size) are much more important than local properties (like details to increase likeness):
• Abstract icons become much faster selected than concrete icons.
• The selection speed for abstract items seems to be less dependent on the number of icons than is the case for concrete and textual items ("parallel search").

• Similar objects/functions should be assigned similar icons.
• Users should be able to easily understand the intended meaning of icons, or at least be able to learn it quickly.
• The addition of textual labels makes it easier for beginning users to learn, and for infrequent users to recognize, the graphical menu items.