When I was first asked to create an icon set, with full creativity, you can imagine how excited I was. Unlimited possibilities...but what would I do? I started with thinking of things that would be fun, or things that I loved: the months of the year, Texas, and my bucket list. The I broke those down and thought of all the possibilities I could do with those 3 topics.
Once I had gone through that process, I got really excited about the bucket list idea. I wanted to make people feel excited. If you're someone who like to travel, you know that feeling you get when you haven't gone somewhere for a few months, that travel itch? I wanted people to feel that as they looked at my icons. A list of icons that infused my love of traveling and my dreams in one document.
It also seemed like something that would make it not feel like "work". As I started sketching out and making my words come to life, I got even more excited. Soon I narrowed down my sketches and went into drawing to figure out what shapes to use.
The beginning of the project work went so fast! I was so excited to get working! I was actually on a trip and I did pretty much 6 of the icons on the plane cause it was just so fun to work on.
I was almost halfway, when I felt like the document looked empty as I placed the icons on it. This is where I had the idea to place check marks under the places I have been and circles around the places I haven't. I felt like this would further infuse a dream aspect into my piece. Where people could see where I have gone and see my desire to keep going and keep placing check marks under those iconic places. Once I had finished about half of it, then showed it around to get some critiques on how the styling was so far. Once I had adjusted some aspect (minor things really) I moved forward with the designs.
As I got further into the project, it got a little more difficult, I felt like I had hit a wall. Literally, I couldn't figure out how to get the Great Wall of China to look right. I went back to the sketch book and went through it a million times. I started thinking, maybe this just wasn't the right icon for China, so I went all the way to the very start of the process and I made a list of all the China icons I could think of, that's where the idea for the Forbidden City Temple came from, and that idea just flowed. I hit a groove and was able to finish it all up!
When I felt pretty set on how the icons looked, I took all 12 of them to my coworkers and asked for feedback. They said that the blacklines were a bit distracting and they gave me some feedback on placements and some small details to clean up. This feedback really helped the piece come together. Once I had applied their feedback to took it to a different set of people and got their critiques and applied it. I did this process a few more times until I felt the product was complete.
This finished document just completed the goals I wanted. As I looked at the icons, it made me want to travel, and I had started this project while traveling! I also was infused with the dream concept from the check marks under a few of the icons. I feel like this is a piece people will see and feel my desire to go to the rest of these pieces! I am very happy with how it turned out.
