It's much more successful if it is simple. Her restraint also applies to the use of color. Her icons tend to be rendered in bright, primary colors. But the secret to her art is not just pruning or rendering an image in light but also coming up with a cohesive metaphor for whatever action the icon must represent. Nouns are easy, she said.
Verbs are hard.
She does not strive to make the action represented by each icon instantly recognizable. Her goal is to make them easy to remember. It is also a challenge to come up with a fresh idea for a well-worn concept. For each icon that ends up in a program, she said, two or three others are rejected. The image graveyard is littered with things that might have been.