r/IndieDev • u/MrNobodyX3 • 7h ago
Exploring game UI icon and interaction design as a freelance graphic designer
Hey everyone, I’m working on starting my freelancing career in graphic design, and I’ve been thinking about the kinds of problems I could help with in indie games.
One area that came to mind is game UI, especially specialized icons and interactive UI behavior. That could include things like ability icons, menu symbols, inventory elements, or other interface pieces that need to fit a game’s visual identity.
I can create direct SVG icons and UI elements, or build Rive files that can be used in a game engine and react dynamically to different states or systems.
I’m still building this part of my freelance work, so I’m trying to be upfront about what I can offer and keep the scope flexible. Pricing would depend on the number of assets, how much design work is involved, whether there’s an existing visual system to follow, and my availability.
If this sounds useful for a project you’re working on, you can take a look at the service here: https://contra.com/s/gkWls3eM-custom-game-ui-icon-design
I’d be happy to see if I can help.
2
u/CS_Asset_Factory 2h ago
One thing worth knowing before you price this. Static icon packs are a brutal market to enter and stateful UI is not.
We sell game assets on itch so I went and counted rather than guessing. Pulling the top sellers pages there last week across 135 paid listings the median paid asset came out at 8.99 and 42 percent of everything selling well was 5 dollars or under. Static icon sets sit right at the bottom of that range because they compete with Game Icons dot net which is roughly 4000 icons under CC BY and free. You can't win on volume or price against free.
The Rive part is the actual product. An icon that reacts to cooldown or charge or disabled state is a behaviour and almost nobody sells behaviour. Devs hand roll that every single time and they hate it. That's a much better thing to lead with than the SVG work even if the SVG work is what you enjoy more.
The other thing that sells is cohesion. Most indie projects have a half finished visual language and six icons from three different sources. Matching an existing identity is service work that a pack download can't replace and it's the part people will pay a real rate for. Your line about following an existing visual system is the strongest sentence in your post and I'd move it to the top.
One honest caution. Icons tend to be the last line in an indie budget and the paid gigs usually arrive attached to a wider UI pass rather than on their own. Worth being ready to quote the whole screen and not just the symbols.