Is there really no better icon for a “company” than a building? [closed]

Question

I want to show the location of different companies within a Google map with icons.

Most of the time you see "buildings" used as a company icon.

Do you have an interesting alternative?

Answer 1

This depends on the context. Is the user expecting to see only Companies on your map? In that case any simple, visually distinctive marker will to - like the red pin in iOS maps.

It's unlikely that users won't use your application because the pins didn't look 'interesting' enough. Interesting could also mean breaking conventions for the sake of it, which is never advisable.

If your users however expect to see different things on a map, such as companies, hospitals, schools and parks, then buildings do make a lot of sense as a marker. Confirming here doesn't stop you from standing out, because the graphical details of this marker.

It also depends on what you want to portray. In a map of businesses, pins will do. In a map of consultancy, banking, food and entertainment businesses, where it is important to you to differentiate between them, it would be important to use different markers. You'll often see restaurants and pubs to have different icons from offices, although all are businesses.

You may further want to consider that if you show only one type of business, but have information in addition to their location which is key to the value of your application, you may want to show it differently:

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This can be anything that adds value really, like whether it is open currently or not, how long to the next bus at a bus stop, or the star rating for restaurants.

Answer 2

My thoughts -

1. Showing the logo of the company spread out on the map - Works well against monotonous generic images as better branding strategy

2. Color codes with flags- This will be generic, but certainly assures that the important areas are "flagged out" or "marked out" - works well when more items are clustered in a region and by color it sometimes becomes easy differentiation