My latest work is a set of six vector icons created around a camping theme. In this article I’ll discuss my design process and the fruitful collaboration with the client.

Andy Law of WebAgencies.com contacted me to design six icons based around the concept of camping. The six themes were: “Base Camp”, “Mid Mountain”, “Summit”, “Sherpa”, “Gear” and “Campfire.” His brief was short but to-the-point: the icons needed to be three-dimensional, fun and professional. Andy explained to me that the first three icons would be used for three different package offerings, from entry-level to premium, therefore they had to work together as a subset.

I start every job with a short, focused analysis of the subject at hand so I spent some time looking for information and photographic reference on camping. “What does a typical base camp look like?”, “How to represent mid mountain?”, “Who exactly are the sherpas?” were some of the questions I tried to answer in this phase.

A base camp is a bunch of tents close together so I decided to collect as many pictures of tents as possible to be able to extract the ideal tent. This is what I came up with in Illustrator with lots of help from the Gradient Mesh tool:

And this is the base camp, three colored tents arranged in perspective:

For the second icon, “Mid Mountain”, I decided to draw a little mountain with a small clearing on the side. This is where I placed one of the previous tents as these icons had to play off of each other:

The “Summit” icon shows the same mountain, but the different rock color and the snowcaps sell the idea that we’re now at the top:

The “Sherpa” icon was the one that worried me the most: would I be able to synthesize a typical Himalayan guide in a small, simple illustration? After some failed attempts this is what I came up with:

I liked the fact that he’s smiling and the earthy colors were specifically chosen to communicate the idea of a local, traditional mountain guide.

On to the “Gear” icon, the task here was to identify the most typical (iconic) piece of camping equipment. Initially wanting to avoid the obvious backpack, I focused on burners, sleeping bags and Swiss Army knives. In the end, though, I decided to go for the backpack: when it comes to icons there’s no need to be coy. Graphic metaphors need to be original but never at the expense of immediate understandability. So backpack it was:

The last icon, “Campfire”, was a no brainer: design a campfire, right? Well it turns out it’s not so easy to draw convincing flames, for starters, and there’s also the problem of detail: would some logs and a fire suffice? I decided to avoid the easiest route and added a fire circle made of round stones:

So this is the first draft I submitted:

Immediately I noticed that the “Gear” icon didn’t belong in that group: it was too detailed! While the first three definitely worked together as a group and the sherpa and the campfire matched their soft, round graphic style, the backpack was too realistic and felt really out of place. Without waiting for Andy to point it out, which he certainly would, I completely redesigned it, doing away with all the details I deemed unnecessary. Eventually the icons looked like a unified set:

Andy was pleased with the result but had some corrections to request. He asked me to add some grass and a couple of backpacks in the “Base Camp” icon, some snow and a little campfire in the “Mid Mountain” icon, a small helicopter and a landing platform in the “Summit” icon.
I realized how the design had improved and complimented Andy on the suggestions. The remaining icons were modified too:

Now the sherpa is more colorful, the backpack has more useful gear in it and the campfire has both logs and stones and also sits on grass.

I am very satisfied with the result and have to thank Andy for being very attentive throughout the whole process and especially for providing insightful suggestions that made the icons turn out great. Read Andy’s client testimonial which he was kind enough to write. I wish to thank him for the great opportunity and hope to work with him again soon.