Inform yourself about all standards that apply to your design. When you look for inspiration for your icons, get inspired in your target locales, not your office. Take my wife, please. Raining cats and dogs. You would demand the same.
Hand gestures are notoriously different from culture to culture.
Don't use them. Beware of the symbolic meaning of certain animals. Prepare to work with 2-byte characters, which can represent 16,384 different ones. Query the OS for information. Most OSe are smart enough to be using country-specific drivers.