May 20, 2010 at 14:07Making 200 icons - what problems did you encounter
Continuing the good tradition of sharing icons, I post a series of more than 200 images of various products that our company has developed for one of the grocery online stores. However, given the specifics, it is more correct to call it not an Internet store, but an Internet supermarket.
When working, the most difficult thing was not to draw the icons technically, but to choose my own photo for each. Designers had to sit and watch hundreds of photos of food and drink for hours! Even the most well-fed in about ten minutes began to spit out. Now, designers not only know what marble meat and lobsters are, but they understand how to drink all this. The management expects questions on raising wages, and waiters from a nearby cafe puzzle over what a Sicilian caponata is a dish, a drink or what will happen if the food brought does not please the demanding customer.
As for the icons themselves, I will describe two problems as an example and how we solved them.
As it’s not difficult to guess, we started to draw from the alcohol section. And in the section with beer, we were almost led into a stupor by the fact that beer is produced from different countries. No, of course this is quite logical, but as you tell on a small icon to show the difference between German beer and Czech beer ... but beer from Bavaria came separately (Bavarians are very proud of their beer and do not identify it with the rest of Germany beer), not every specialist distinguishes them in I’m living, if you don’t give beer for tasting ... They puzzled for quite some time, even decided to switch to other sections, but suddenly our lead designer Zhenya gave birth - FLAGS; Yes, not just flags, but to link with the beer theme - round, like beer coasters (the so-called round cardboard coasters for beer glasses) or like bottle caps:
Having defeated beer from different countries, we certainly did not count on problems in the division of products, namely with meat.
Beef, that’s how it’s logical to show? That's right - a piece of meat (yes, yes, it is different from pork and this should not cause difficulties) ... BUT! beef can be chilled and freshly frozen, and it can be marble, and there is (!) veal, which is not beef at all. As a result, I had to resort again to our round indicators (with size modifications, of course), and replace the piece of meat with a living image of the future steak:
These are the adventures with icons.
When working, the most difficult thing was not to draw the icons technically, but to choose my own photo for each. Designers had to sit and watch hundreds of photos of food and drink for hours! Even the most well-fed in about ten minutes began to spit out. Now, designers not only know what marble meat and lobsters are, but they understand how to drink all this. The management expects questions on raising wages, and waiters from a nearby cafe puzzle over what a Sicilian caponata is a dish, a drink or what will happen if the food brought does not please the demanding customer.
As for the icons themselves, I will describe two problems as an example and how we solved them.
As it’s not difficult to guess, we started to draw from the alcohol section. And in the section with beer, we were almost led into a stupor by the fact that beer is produced from different countries. No, of course this is quite logical, but as you tell on a small icon to show the difference between German beer and Czech beer ... but beer from Bavaria came separately (Bavarians are very proud of their beer and do not identify it with the rest of Germany beer), not every specialist distinguishes them in I’m living, if you don’t give beer for tasting ... They puzzled for quite some time, even decided to switch to other sections, but suddenly our lead designer Zhenya gave birth - FLAGS; Yes, not just flags, but to link with the beer theme - round, like beer coasters (the so-called round cardboard coasters for beer glasses) or like bottle caps:
Having defeated beer from different countries, we certainly did not count on problems in the division of products, namely with meat.
Beef, that’s how it’s logical to show? That's right - a piece of meat (yes, yes, it is different from pork and this should not cause difficulties) ... BUT! beef can be chilled and freshly frozen, and it can be marble, and there is (!) veal, which is not beef at all. As a result, I had to resort again to our round indicators (with size modifications, of course), and replace the piece of meat with a living image of the future steak:
These are the adventures with icons.