Objects Into Icons // Final Post

INTRODUCTION

I have finally come to the conclusion of the following set of icons. I have decided to use the pattern throughout each separate icon. The "pattern" was inspired by woven blankets and pattern from Native American art, blankets, and clothing.

FINAL ICONS

From left to right; feather, fire, tree, teepee, moccasin, tomahawk, canoe, headdress, crane.

All nine icons with 4" and 1" versions

PROGRESSION OF AN ICON

Below are three of the icons and how the process of making them came to be.

After displaying my process with many iterations, one may wonder, "Julie, tell me, how did you pick the final form that you did?" Well, that's a great question! In a nutshell, iconic shapes are pictographs reduced to geometric forms. So I thought, "Why not go with geometric forms?" Actually there's more than that. I let myself become influenced with actual, recognizable Aztec and Native American Indian shapes and patterns. I then included the pattern below in each one of my shapes in a recognizable fashion (taking place of a sensible part of each icon).

Left; native black diamond pattern Right; my own fabricated pattern

CREATING A STORY

The title of my story is called Vision Quest

WRITTEN REFLECTION

As long as I have been working on this project, I have enjoyed it so far. I have become attached to my shaped and realize that I could keep iterating them until I'm blue in the face but the decision to keep them where they are is comforting for me. Realizing that I was not designing these icons only for myself but for people was a nice thought. There's nothing like when someone else can read your idea as clear as day. They see exactly what was meant to be communicated. I believe I have made the right decisions when it comes to legibility, scaling matters, remembrance, and cohesion to support my ideas in a "first wave glance".

Details are another important part of the icons. When scaling the icon larger or small, some visual elements start to bleed or get completely erased. Paying attention to line weight and where points connect can be a problem when the icon is blow up very large. Clever lines and shapes always win against super detailed compositions, when it comes to the form known as an icon.

Not only is using written and spoken language important, but it is also important to being able to link any vocal points to the work, itself. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. With these pictures [icons] they are saying that I understand the objectives of this assignment.