by Justas | Sep 1, 2015 | Articles
I keep getting the same old question over and over again: Should I have my own icon style? And how to develop one then? Finding your own unique aesthetics is always a big struggle and a huge task that requires a lot of time and effort. But first things first, let’s start from the question – Do you even need to have your own style? Absolutely every project calls for a different style, and it depends on plenty of things like where the icons are going to be used, what the logo and brand style guidelines are, and many more. The trick here is that you need to know the basics of every style, but you can’t be equally as good at all of them. In fact, what you can be is equally mediocre at all. You can be average at a lot of things or great at few. It took me quite some time to understand this. Being a young maximalist I tried to be good at everything. It was ok, I was ok. However, it hadn’t been up until the day I niched down and started working in one particular style when the things moved on for me. Not only did I find so many details about it – my works improved drastically, and I got a lot more great clients to work with. My aesthetics is outline icons. I specialize in outline icons, I seem to know every little secret about creating perfect outline icons, but do I have my own signature style? Hard to say. I believe there is something people recognize me for, however,...
by Justas | Aug 28, 2015 | Inspiration
Happy Friday, everyone! I’ve decided to try something different today. Last week I started sort of collecting the best icons I stumble upon all over the internet, and now I’m dying to share some of them with you! I’m sure you will discover some great icon designers you had no idea about. That is an amazing way to get some inspiration too. Without further ado, let’s dive into the best icons I came across in the past two weeks: So, how do you like the idea? Should I stick to it and make it a regular thing? Do you feel excited about getting the Icons of the Week delivered into your inbox every week? Or are you a newsletter with articles and tutorials kind of person? Either way, drop me a line saying what you think about my idea. Hope it was entertaining, and you discovered some incredible icon designers. But more than that, I hope this post inspired you to create something of your own! Cheers, and see you...
by Justas | Aug 27, 2015 | Articles
Yes, you’ve read that right. Be shameless – go find the icon set you really like and copy it, right after finishing this article.Copy till you can’t tell the difference between the two sets. “Why?”, you might ask. The answer’s easy – to learn. Copying the work of others is the best way to gain new skills, and one must have no shame to admit it. If you don’t publish it taking all the credits for yourself, of course. Copying to learn is the most natural trait of human behaviour. Newborn children copy their parents. They watch and follow every step trying to understand and then imitate what they’ve seen, day after day. Toddlers are amazing little students. It’s hard to imagine, how many information they actually absorb in their childhood. But in the artistic community, copying other designers’ work is still a dogma. Sure, everyone wants to be unique and have their own style. The problem is, however, that lots of designers want to develop their own style way too early. Before they even learned some basics and prepared the fundament for their future career. This leads to a lot of mediocre works. Having ambition is good. But before taking over the icon design world, copy the works of professionals to understand the techniques and master your skills. Only after that you may try to find your own unique style. There’s a catch though. You should not blindly copy the work of others. The key to success and the whole point of copying is to understand how everything works and why it’s made the way it’s made. You...
by Justas | Aug 25, 2015 | Articles
Howdy, guys! Here’s a little icebreaker before you read any further: Okay, as cheesy as this was, it showed that colours are the power. They can make the icon or break it in the blink of an eye. That is why choosing the right colours for your icons is so important – using proper palettes, you can transfer the message on a subconscious level. As everything in the icon design, choosing the perfect colours for each set has its own secrets. And I’m about to reveal some of them for you right now: Know The Context It all comes down to where your icons are going to be used. There are two main things to consider before you start: Where the icons will be used; Who are they aimed for. Here’s how it works: you’re creating icons for a mountain biking website. If it’s not the internet rookies who entered the website by mistake, all the content will be viewed by mountain bikers. Obviously. Google is a treasury of the images on mountain biking. Take a look at some of them, and you’ll start noticing certain colouring patterns. Use them for your own colour palette. Use The Brand Colours Do I even need to go into why you should stick to the existing brand/logo colour palette if your client has one? Just a reminder: icons play an enormous role in the brand identity and messages they deliver. If you feel that the brand colours are too pale and weak to speak as loud as you need your icons to, I would suggest you go for different shades of the already...
by Justas | Aug 21, 2015 | Icon Tutorials
Why Pixel Perfect is important? Icons are all about clarity and communication. Blurry icons can’t communicate as good as sharp ones. Simple as that. Imagine if road signs were blurry, what a mess they would make! When you’re working with bigger icons (>64px), blurry edges usually look unaesthetic, and if you need to use them on a smaller scale (16px – 32px) they might be even unrecognizable. And you will never know how your client will use these icons in the future. So pixel perfect is the way to go! Every Icon Designer should know how to create pixel perfect icons. At some time in the future these skills might become less important as the resolutions on our devices are becoming higher. However, for now it is an absolute must, or a super power for every icon designer out there! At the beginning of my career as an iconographer, I was struggling with making my icons pixel perfect. Sometimes it was a fail after a fail, but now, with all the experience behind my back, I can proudly say that my icons are sharp as hell! I learned the importance of pixel perfect design the hard way, but it was totally worth it. Now I feel the need to share this experience. Let me show you my way of making pixel perfect icons. Part 1: Setting up the document So you want to make pixel perfect icons. Great. The first step you have to take is to create a correct Illustrator file. There are 3 key elements in creating proper pixel perfect Illustrator document: artboard dimensions, units and aligning...
