The Quest For Synectics

For one of my graphic design classes, we're currently working on a project about synectics (creative visual thinking through the use of analogies). We have to come up with and design 4 icons based on animals, humans, plants and man-made objects. Not so hard, right? Well, I had to come up with at least 20 ideas each, so 80 minimum. In a design standpoint, that's nothing and oftentimes, you need that many to just keep pushing out ideas and flush out the cliché and unoriginal ones. I'm just a lazy student who wants to use the first things that come to mind, but as I progress in my schooling, I know by now that that just won't work. Although I tried to fight the process, I ended up with some pretty cool stuff in my opinion.

Here's 2 pages of some of my quick sketches. Some of these are awful cause the ideas were awful and I'm no fantastic illustrator. Things were going smoothly on page one, but when I got to page 2 with the human referencing icons… things took a turn for the worst. haha

Here's two pretty much completed icon sketches. The first one is an eye w/ a spirit level (like the ones construction workers use). I came up with it thinking about how we use our eyes to visually see if something is level with a spirit level, as well as just quickly surveying objects with our eyes to see if they appear to be level. The second one is a blow fish balloon. You could see it as the fish blowing itself up in order to remain inflated.

This last one is a firecracker. I really like this one. I took that black line below the flames too far left when I was drawing it with my ruler, but it'll be easily fixable since I'm importing all my icon drawings into Adobe Illutstrator.





As you can see, I still need to come up with a plant themed icon, but I was considering a "candy" apple. I'm visioning an apple with those twistable candy wrapper sides. Hmm... we shall see. And a sidenote: These icons are going to be black and white. ^_^

Until next time,

-Jennifer