#s5113110 Week 02 Design Brief

Client: Pop Haus Digital Design

Description: The client is redeveloping their website and wants to create a web icon for each member of their staff. 

Used reference image to identify key features - hair, eyes, smile. Sketches done to explore different ways to represent these key features. It is interesting to see how the use of shape and size of features makes a difference to the end result. Will experiment in illustrator with combinations of these shapes as well as proportions to get a more accurate representation of the photo. I feel it is important to get the persons' key features right so the web icons of the clients staff members are easily recognisable. 

Experimentation in Adobe Illustrator using different shapes and colours to portray main facial features. The first icons I didn't complete as it didn't match the style the client was after. After some experimentation, I decided that flat eyebrows made my icon look masculine, so I went for curved, the hair and eye colours are defining features, so I decided to include those, and the smile showing teeth was the final feature I thought reflected personality best.

This is my final web icon design. I kept the features I mentioned above as being important to represent this person - hair colour, eye colour, curved eyebrows and a big smile showing teeth. I also worked on the hair shape and volume to help make the icon more feminine, which I think worked quite effectively. 

When choosing the background colour for the icon, without having more information about the company colours or personality, I decided upon a colour that would help make the icons 'pop' on screen. After trying a few colours, I found this orange colour had the effect I wanted. To make sure it would suit other staff members features, I changed the hair colours and was happy with the result. 

Group feedback session revealed that the skin and hair colour were a little too close and it may not be easy to distinguish hair and face if the icon were to be reduced in size. It has been noted that the use of gradient may not be ideal for print, but as the brief is for a web icon, at this stage I have kept the eye gradient colours as the eyes are a defining feature.