This weeks lecture was all about icons including icon design, inspiration and master apprentice.
To begin the lecture we looked at simplified icons compared to detailed icons. I really liked the ‘simplified’ version of the millennium falcon which takes a very detailed and complex design and simplifies it down to shapes while keeping all of its key details.
Next we looked at more detailed icon designs, which looked like travel icons which could be used to advertise nature walks or something similar.
In the lecture I looked different sets of similar icons for example sports icons, which all icons in the set are different but keep a consistent body This is something to keep in mind when creating my icons as I am planning on doing icons which will be unique to my idea but will be majorly different from the ‘common’ icons which I will still use.
During the lecture it was also mentioned how icons are a universal language for everyone to understand, such as lady, men and disabled toilet icons where these are understood by everyone across the world.
Later in the lecture we looked at different styles of icons including outline, glyph, hand drawn, filled, flat and skeuomorpfic icons. By looking at the different style examples I like outline and filled the best which I may apply them to my music app icons.
While keeping the styles in mind I also need to consider the level of detail in my icons. I plan for all the basic function icons such as search and favourites to be basic but for my homepage and logo I plan for something more detailed but still not super detailed.
Something I thought was great for future reference is to start large and scale down when designing icons. If I do design something quite detailed and when scaled down it may not work as well I could remove elements of the design for a smaller scale.