When I think of a summer in Idaho one word comes to my mind- adventure! Because of Idaho’s large mountain range, national parks, and beautiful scenery I knew that many of my icons would encapsulate the outdoors in some way. I live in a small town in Idaho, where everyone is so calm, happy, and enjoys the simple life! Because of that I did not want to make the icons appear too complicated with lots of detail. My objective was to reflect happiness, simplicity and enjoyment of living in this great state. The process of creating these icons included sketching, designing, more sketching, peer feedback, and multiple rounds of revision. Let’s look at these steps in greater detail.

Program Used: Illustrator

I began with a brainstorming session. I listed a bunch of ideas that came to my mind when I thought about the summer. Then I sketched out 25 different variations of my favorite ideas from the list. During sketching I tried not to overthink or be too complicated with my designs. I wanted them to be simple and easily recognizable. I also did not want any overly sharp edges. Summertime to me means a worry-free state of mind. I did not want these icons to feel tight or trapped in, so I tried to avoid any hard lines or corners in my design process.  

Feedback & more drafting

After the first draft I received some feedback which included: simplifying the bark, changing the toasted part of the marshmallow, working on how the handlebar attaches to the paddle, adding thicker strokes to the paddles and changing all the other strokes so that the darker color was on the outside. A lighter stroke on the outside, like on the mountains, gives off a glowy look and that is not what I wanted. So, after some more work this is what the second draft looked like:

One icon that was especially hard for me to nail down was the roasted marshmellow. Here was my process: