Symbols for Diagrams

[danielromlein]

About

Kubernetes is a complex product and we would like to be able to better explain its core concepts through use of visuals. A visual language composed of symbols and icons will enable the creation of illustrative diagrams.

Current State

Only symbols we have today are in the first five slides of this Google Cloud Platform slide deck (if anyone has any others please share).

Proposal

1. Prioritize concepts we want to have visualizations for.
2. Discuss possible representations for concepts & post sketches. Loop in Google UX researchers for feedback.
3. Establish basic visual guidelines for designs of different icons to adhere to as we expand the library. Symbols should be grounded in Material Design System Icons principles (e.g. "Bold, geometric, simple, intuitive, actionable, consistent"). The Slides of the Google Cloud Platform visual language should be referenced as inspiration, but we're also not going out of our way to align with this style.
4. Design visually consistent vector (i.e. SVG) symbols.

Based on @bgrant0607's proposed concepts, I've put together the following list of concepts to consider for visualization:

• Pod
• All types of services:
  • Cluster
  • Nodeport
  • Loadbalancer
  • Headless
  • Imported
• Ingress
• EndPoint
• Every controller:
  • Replication Controller
  • Replica Set
  • Deployment
  • DaemonSet
  • PetSet
  • Job
  • ScheduledJob
• Rolling update
• Canary deployment pattern
  • with ConfigMap
• Horizontal Pod Autoscaling
• ServiceAccount
• Secret
• Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims
• System Architecture
• Things we will need to diagram concepts and processes
  • Virtual IP
  • IP address
  • Running Container
  • Request / Response

As @pwittrock pointed out, we should focus first on designing visualizations for concepts, while keeping in mind how those visualizations will come together in more complex diagrams (e.g. deployment)

Reference

• Issue #84 – "We need more diagrams!"
• Brian Grant WSO2Con US 2015 Kubernetes Slides
• Microsoft's Azure, Cloud and Enterprise Symbol / Icon Set

[bryk]

CC @kubernetes/dashboard-maintainers

[bryk]

Is this about creating simple icons that'll identify aforementioned concepts or complex diagrams that would explain how they work? I'm particularly interested whether this would fit into the navigation menu that we work on in kubernetes/dashboard#908.

If this can fit into the menu, I'm more than happy to gather a team and help out with this. We can do some collaborative brainstorming to throw out ideas on the table.

What do you think?

[bryk]

Prioritize concepts we want to have visualizations for.

I'd like us to move forward with top-level menu items from: kubernetes/dashboard#908. Then, if feasible, second level of navigation.

[jaredbhatti]

Closing this issue for issue hygine reasons. Please reopen if it's still necessary.

[techtonik]

It is still necessary - #3584

[techtonik]

I'd like to create Inkscape symbol library and even cover it with some history to introduce people into it if there are some funds.

[techtonik]

Also would be nice to have some convention for placing such symbols in source code repositories.

[Vlaaaaaaad]

This is very much needed. Creating documentation and plans for Kubernetes without having any icons is a huge struggle. The end-result looks bad too.

See AWS Icon packs and how AWS schemas are all the same, no matter who the author is( an official drawing or a random blog post).