OmniGraffle, the Mac-based workflow application, comes with a pretty good set of stencils. You can also find loads of free stencils and build fairly nice workflows and diagrams by throwing random icons on a screen. But if you’re looking for a consistent set of icons for designing information technology related workflows and diagrams, good luck. After tirelessly looking for the perfect set of IT-related stencils (yes I looked at Microsoft Visio too; the icons are actually worse), I decided the only way to get exactly what I want is to do it myself.
I scribbled some icons on a few pages, scanned them and sent them off to an artist. I had a very distinct style in mind for this set of icons. I do a fair bit of whiteboarding at work—hashing out network topologies, software workflows or data flows—and what I really wanted was a way to capture my hand-drawn diagrams in electronic form (albeit a bit more artistic and cleaner than my whiteboard scribbles). The end result is this growing collection of icons.
I’m trying something new with this and I don’t really expect much uptake, but since I have a decent investment in this stencil, I decided I would make it available for a small fee. It’s $4.99 and will come with free updates whenever I add new icons.
You can purchase the stencil here: Architecture by Hand.
