I decided to challenge myself by creating a series of 12 icons in Adobe Illustrator. Since I am still learning the program’s in and outs, it was the perfect excuse to immerse myself in Illustrator. As an avid baker and lover of all things sweet, choosing to create ingredients for cupcakes was a no-brainer! By sharing this set on Illustrator, I’m hoping to share the message (and joy) of baking in a simple manner. It doesn’t matter what language you speak or your cooking knowledge; these icons are universal enough to be understood by all.
The first step was to consult many different cupcake recipes to ensure I included all the main ingredients in my icon set. With my focus set on the big stuff--such as flour and sugar-- it would have been easy to forget vanilla. And that would make a terrible dessert!
However, I soon discovered that most recipes only used 9 ingredients, but I still wanted to create a set of 12 icons. So, I simply used this as an opportunity to create cupcake liners, the mixing bowl and ultimately the cupcake itself as the last 3 icons! After deciding on the icon topics, it was time to sketch. I’m a little picky when it comes to design, so I sketched each ingredient from different angles and containers.
At first glance, my sketches appear a bit scattered. But if you look close enough, you’ll notice that each ingredient is surrounded by its variations. This was the time to experiment with angles and showing ingredients in more/less detail, since sketching ideas is much easier than creating multiple versions in Illustrator.
Once I selected the winning option for each ingredient, I realized this icon set was going to be a bit trickier than I thought; I preferred 3D ingredients and wanted a bit of a shadow. Instead of going back to the drawing board, I thought: “Challenge Accepted!”
While my first draft took a (very) long time to create, I was happy with the results. Most of the critique I received was about fixing the shadows, tossing out extra anchor points and rounding out sharp edges. Fortunately, these were relatively easy fixes and I didn’t have to start from scratch. As a bonus, by incorporating this feedback, I was able to avoid the same pitfalls when creating the last 6 icons:
By looking at the finished product, it’s easy to understand the message it conveys: baking a cupcake. Each ingredient mimics the shape and color of its real-life counterpart for easy recognition and is arranged in such a way to show the process behind making this treat!
