05 Week - Project 3

In reading about icons,  I learned that there are 6 styles.

1. Outline - just a simple line drawing of a design
2. Filled - still a simple line drawing but now with color
3. Glyph - a solid design, almost like the negative of a picture
4. Flat - similar to the filled icon but usually uses flat colors
5. Hand drawn - made to look like they've been drawn by hand
6. Skeuomorphic - made to look very realistic to an actual item.

I also read about tips on how to design your own icons. Before beginning you should start by sketching out some ideas.  This saves time later when you're actually working on the computer. For designing its important to use a graph to keep everything lined up, even, and spaced equally.  Spacing and size proportion are very important in the look and cohesion of the icons. 

The icons should be simple and made in the size they are intended to be used.  If they are too complicated then it loses the attention of the user or becomes too hard to understand at a glance.  Which means that each icon should also be easily recognizable. 

Color is also extremely important.  When choosing a color palette, keep it simple and make sure that the color scheme looks pleasing to the eye. Although color isn't required and even one color can be used as long as it fits the theme of your icons.

 While researching different styles of icons, there were three that caught my eye as I looked up some of my own interests.  

"Knitting" was first, as that's what I love to do.  I like this icon because it's not what most people would see for knitting.  As a knitter, and as most knitters would know, this is for a machine knitter. I like the simplicity of the design and how they've chosen one single color for their outline icon.

Next I looking up "spinning wheel" because that's another hobby of mine.  I like to make my own yarn for knitting.  Not much came up, as you can imagine, but this volleyball icon appeared in the list of results. I like the color, it's soothing, and I like the motion shown in the wavy lines.  It's a fun example of a filled icon.

And then I looked up "cats", of course, because I have four of them and just adore them.  There were many options to choose from but this was my favorite. It's a another outline icon.  The lines are all proportioned in the right thickness with all rounded curves to soften the look.  Its definitely easy to recognize with just a few simple lines. 

Moving forward with our next project, designing a set of fruit icons, below is some sketching that I did.  At the bottom are the five I plan to move forward with.