The journey of my first icon set.

Sketches.

The sketching process was crucial for me to nail the look and feel I was after with these icons. I tried to find some way to marry the idea of a 'manly' hobby with a baby feel to them. This was in an attempt to add some interest and humor to the juxtaposition of themes.

I started by exploring the idea of basing my icon set on the theme of fishing. However, once I played around with a 'tool' theme, I was sold. I quickly grabbed a new page and began playing with the shapes of each tool to bring out the cute baby vibe. The key words I tried to emphasize were cute, chubby, and round. The key words were essentially road signs to guide me and make sure I wasn't going off track.

First draft.

I was extremely happy with the first set of icons I created. They really hit the nail on the head (pun intended) when it came to my key words. I was able to sit on these icon's for a few days as I received feedback from my peers. Here are some examples of feedback I received:

"Try removing the stroke."

"Involve yellow into the designs more."

"Equalize the size of each icon so they are balanced."

I took the feedback with grace and made some necessary tweaks while adding three additional icons.

Second draft.

The addition of more yellow to the page helped bring the icons together even more. At this point I sent my icon set to Cory Kerr ( https://www.corykerr.com/ ). He graciously reviewed them and gave me feedback as well as pointing out some areas of conflict with tangents or conflicting strokes. The main thing I tried to incorporate from his feedback was to round some of the highlights and shadow shapes to make it more smooth and polished. This is where I landed.

Final Draft