I am a designer and I have created a few icons. How would I need to package said icons so an end user could install easily and only change the icons I have specified and not mess with any other icons?
If it is important to know -- the launchers in question are Libre Graphics (gimp, inkscape, blender, bluefish, scribus, etc.)
It would be best if the method is cross-environment (works in unity, gnome, kde, etc) but Unity is what I am using so that is the most important to me.
Just create an icon theme that depends on a another standard theme like Humanity. You can use the other Icon Theme as a base and just replace the icons you want to replace. This way users can select your theme or the standard theme if they wish, and even change the "inherit" variable to the theme of their choice.