ART 235 - Project 1

"Design a set of icons to represent four of the ten concentration areas in the Department of Art and Design. The ten areas are as follows: Art Education, Art History, Ceramics, Drawing, Fibers, Graphic Design, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture."

This project was to familiarize us with using Adobe Illustrator, particularly the pen tool. Try to guess which area each icon represents.



They are Photography, Painting, Ceramics, and Printmaking. When coming up with some sketches, I knew that there wasn't much I could do by creating straight up images with the few skills I had in Illustrator to make them stand out from the rest of the class. I toyed with a border around them, then went to the border and just a piece of the object. What that allowed me to do was have a unique take on the icons that 20 other people were doing and challenge myself by standing apart from them.

With the designs I chose, there is an excellent balance of black and white, and with each object based in the bottom-right corner, it creates a uniform look for the set. The viewers' eyes create the rest of the image for them outside the lines, and there are very subtle hints in each icon to have a slight three-dimensional look to them, while also appearing very flat.

One of the strongest aspects to the icons is how surprisingly well they reduce in size. I played around with the stroke width a bit, and I am really proud of the end result.