From the course: Creating Icons with Illustrator

The concept of an icon - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Creating Icons with Illustrator

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The concept of an icon

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- Now, before we can dive into the world of icon design, let's take a step back and let's take a look at the concept of an icon. I mean, what is an icon anyway? Well, simply put an icon is a visual representation of an object or a concept, and that concept could be anything. It could be a bit of information. It could be an instruction, or it could be a warning to something. Now, an icon is basically a symbol that makes its meaning clear without using any words. And icons are all around us. And we know that we can find icons on our smart devices and desktop computers. So, the IT world has really embraced icons, but we can find icons on food packaging or maps or the back of cleaning products. So again, more icons that want to draw your attention and make their meaning clear without really using any words here. Now, when you design an icon it's really important to understand that you have to keep the icon as simple as possible. If I were to come up with a few basic rules of what makes for a great icon, the first one would be that the icon needs to be very simple in its design. So not a huge illustration, something that is simple in design, and that is scalable, which means that you have to be able to scale it down and its meaning should still be obvious when you see it. Now, secondly the icon should not really be using a lot of letters or words because it has to be able to make its meaning clear to the viewer regardless of where the viewer comes from or which language he or she might speak. So again, icons should be part of a type of universal language. Now, this is sometimes harder than you think, because if I were to ask you to design an icon, that means basketball you would probably draw basketball. If I ask you to design icon that means beer you would probably end up designing a glass of beer or maybe a bottle of beer. But what if I asked you to design something that's a bit more abstract, let's say doubt or prosperity. That is very, very difficult to do. So, it's really important to go through this thought process, to go through this creative process and to try to approach such a concept as best as you can, or in multiple different ways just to get the best idea that you can onto paper and then into Adobe Illustrator. So, what I'll try and do is I'll try and give you a few tips throughout this course to basically help you streamline your creativity just a little bit and get your best ideas out of your head and onto Adobe Illustrator.

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