Creating My Icons

It took me several different refinements to be able to finally get my system right. I kept jumping around from one idea to the next.


This was my first set of icons. Originally because of the time that I had spent on developing the trash icon, and because of how refined it was, I decided to us the embedded concepts for my system. The idea was that it is clean balanced between curved and balanced between curved and straight lines. But the rest of my icons dont fit in at all and each seemed to have their very on system. But I could look at these icons and take certain elements from each that I could then put into my system to make them work.

Now with this set of Icons i created I was getting closer. I had zoomed in close on each object, made them more equally balanced by color and I added the element of the socks to the legs so I could break up the space more. But during the critique I noticed that I hadn't followed the diagonal on all the images and that they all needed to include and object combined with an action; like the bottle being thrown into the trash, the foot stepping on the flower. I needed to come up with some way that there would be interaction between the bench and the cigarette, and most of all I needed to still develope a good icon for the restroom that followed the system. Also I needed to come up with a way that my walk and run icon could be unified but at the same time could have distinguishable characteristics so that they could be read as separate signs.

For my final set of icons I fixed the above problems by giving them all the same angle, I created a hand that was holding the cigarette to create some sort of interaction, as well as the ball resting on the bench, and then finally I made the walk and run icons exactly the same but added texture to the running to separate the two. Then for the bathroom signs, I illustrated a womens and a mans shoe, this idea I still should have pushed further if the time allowed for me to do so.

Overall while creating my icons I was very frustrated, it took me until the end to understand the idea of a system and especially what exactly my system was. The icons would have been much easier for me to complete I feel if I had spent more time on research and developement through sketches just like I did with the trash icon. But what I liked about my icons is that by including interaction between objects as a part of my system made the icons more interesting and exciting to work with. It forced me to be more creative and to generate ideas that you wouldn't see on a normal basis. I feel that signages systems is definitely and area that Ill still need to improve on but feel like I do have a good basis for it, and also even though I struggled with my system, the fact that I kept working with the idea helped me to learn about the concept within design more, and that was definitely a good outcome for the project.