Visual information such as pictorial symbols, icons and images capture our imagination. In our paper, we discuss icons and images in the context of cross-cultural communication. The authors present their own viewpoints to the subject. We discuss about communication in the multi-cultural world and analyze icons in cross-cultural context. Two professional application domains for icons will be presented. A Kansei-based cross-cultural multimedia computing system and a cross-cultural image communication system are described. Icons are a good means for communication within a certain application domain and in a certain context.