Various national, regional and international standards organizations are responsible for the design, evaluation and standardization of symbols, pictograms and icons. In order to coordinate the work of these standards organizations, and in order to optimize the designs, it is desirable to follow a well-defined methodology. This Recommendation describes a framework for a common methodology to be used by the ITU-T. To the extent that other standards organizations can work within this framework, the development of important designs should progress more rapidly. A uniform methodology will minimize duplication of effort and will maximize the relevance of collected data.