During this class we looked further into icons and the importance of icons. We also looked at some Icon Designers that have made some of the most well known icons of all time.
Icons have been used for so many worldwide events, apps, internationally known icons, such as toilets signs etc. Some events like the Olympics have created some memorable icons. Such as Tokyo 1964, the Berlin 1936 Games and the London 1948. These icons are incredibly important as the Olympics is an international event with lots of different languages watching and attending, therefore these icons need to represent the sport and be identified by everyone.
We looked at Icon sets and what they should be made of, I learnt that all icons in an icon set must be consistent throughout, the weights of the shape, the size of the icon, the same style, colour must all match. These icons can be used for all different types purposes for example, a wide range of mobile apps such as music, flights app, social media etc.
There are also different types of icons that we can choose from, to create our icon set. These types include outline, filled, glyphs, flat, hand drawn and scale morphism. The type of the icon must be consistent, therefore the type of icon must be consistent. It is important that the icons are in harmony with each other otherwise it will not work well on the application, however must not be too similar to each other as this will be confusing.
When creating my icons I must ensure that I am being consistent. To scale the size of my icons I will start from the largest possible size and keep reducing it to get the perfect match. The level of detail the icon has mustn’t be over or under done, it must be discreet but not overwhelming to the user. It is important that the icons are consistent as we don’t want one icon to become distracting compared to the other icons. The icons must be efficient as possible and must be easily recognised/ understood.
Laura Bee is an illustrator and Graphic Designer. Her style is very impressive and seems very detailed compared to other iconographic designs. I really like how she has used two consistent colours throughout her icon set, I would like to do similar in my set. She has a smooth harmony throughout using the same weights, style, colours etc. Her style is very cute and friendly in my opinion , I think her icons would work well with an application that has a similar message of positivity and friendliness. However, I think it may be too detailed for a music app that will need to be as efficient as possible.
A Icon designer, illustrator and art director, Bonnie Kate Wolf has been incredibly successful within her career working with companies such as Netflix, Meta, Chanel, Doordash etc. With netflix being her biggest job yet she has created some amazing icons for something that a majority of people use on a daily, looking at some of these icons I would not even know they were on netflix showing that I do not appreciate these simple but effective buttons. In future I will keep a look out for icons on applications that I use.
