Circular Icons
What They Are:
A circular icon is a smaller-than-normal simple image made entirely of perfect circles. By adding and subtracting circles, what you can create is endless. The extremely small comes from it being an icon, as icons are small images that fit on minimal packaging or are embroidered in
the corner of a shirt.
Project:
For this project, we made circular icons around a selected theme. From that theme, we had to brainstorm different things that would be found within that theme and then choose five of them to continue brainstorming other ways to turn those items into circular icons. We did two work-in-progress critiques to help us keep pushing and refining our work and try to simplify the icon as much as possible without losing the readability of the icon.
My Process:
For the assigned theme, I went with a camera and accessories. I brainstormed several ideas for different camera elements for your other accessories. I then chose flash, film, lens, lighting, and Polaroid. From there, I started with my first icons, which were black and white only. After the first critique, I took my classmates' ideas and tried to simplify my icons even more. From the second critique, I was getting closer to simplifying most of them. These were made in black and white and color, so the color critiques were noted and edited to come up with the final black and
white and color icons.
Knowledge Gained:
From the beginning of this project, I soaked up a bunch of information. First, I learned that a circular icon was compared to just an icon. I then quickly realized how difficult it was to create shapes by adding and subtracting circles (and not by just trying to stack circles to make the appearance of straight lines). I also learned how much detail you must remove to get an extremely simplified image readable as a tiny icon.
