COMPONENT-BASED ICON CONSTRUCTION AND CUSTOMIZATION SYSTEM

System and method for constructing and customizing icons for use in a graphical user interface (GUI) is disclosed. A GUI is provided with a set of available user interface components that may be selected and combined by a user to create new icons or to modify existing icons. Each icon comprises a plurality of components and each component may be represented by a set of primitives, or component objects. With respect to each component, a user may select an object from the set of objects to represent the component and the selected objects are combined to create a coherent icon used for representing applications, functions and documents in an operating system or applications program. The combination of the component objects is performed based on sets of rules associated with the individual components, which rules dictate the positioning, scaling, graphical combination and available coloring of the component. In this manner, the creation and modification of icons is accomplished by manipulating objects, rather than bits.