The Adventurous Granola
A rising trend of the "granola aesthetic" between teens and young adults has sprung recently. Many girls and guys around Idaho, Montana, and Washington have found themselves very passionate about this lifestyle. It was soon titled as being a "granola girl" or "granola boy". It's definition is slightly varied, but I've seen it expressed the most through camping, hiking, canoeing, rock climbing, and simply just spending time outdoors.
The icons I created are inspired by my friends and the trends on social media I've seen floating around this lifestyle. After working on the icons for a week, the set became a mixture of camping, adventuring, and the outdoors.
I knew I had to make rules for my icons to keep them each visually cohesive and also pleasing to the eye. I spent several hours making careful decisions on how to create the whole set. Even though it was hard, I eventually found myself enjoying the long hours of striving to make them look as best as possible.
Being able to enjoy that long work time, I realized I had a constant flow of new ideas on how to improve their look. I loved coming back to my computer to make changes to the little details. Although I sometimes found myself stuck or unable to think very creatively, I would eventually be able to find a way past the issue. Taking a break and coming back to the screen later was often the trick to keep going.
Sketching it Out
I've slowly filled up my sketch books over the past few years with my personal ideas and random inspiration. I doodle whenever I can, or whenever I'm bored. Sketching and doodling has helped so much in narrowing down my ability to process what's going on around me. This helps me in finding my focus without having to force the direction of my brain's main thoughts way too hard.
Sketching out the many ideas I had for my icons went extremely fast. I knew what I liked and what I wanted for my granola theme, so I threw down the first ideas and visuals that came to mind. Now, I see that I was on a slightly different route when I started then than when I finished these icons. In this beginning stage, I wanted them to revolve around specifically camping; a fire, a tent, a s'more, a lantern... you get the picture. As I made more of my icons however, I decided these wouldn't fit the specific lifestyle theme.
The Draft
I often find myself super excited to start a new project in Illustrator. This was one of those projects where all I could think about all day every day was when I would be able to work on it. I knew I wouldn't have to worry about wanting to procrastinate.
For my draft I really just threw down shapes and merged them together until I saw the idea of the objects I had in mind. In my quick shape building I used any color that came to mind for each individual item. This wasn't ideal for the end icon set, but it helped me visualize the concept better.
Now that I see my draft again, I see how terribly flexible and random my rules had become. This proved to be an issue when the scale of the details and the colors I used were not cohesive with one another. Even though I liked where this was going, I was aware there was a long way to go to improve their overall look.
The Final Icons
After settling on a smaller range of color and choosing rules to stick to, I finally saw the icon's better defined cohesion. This is when I decided it was best to simplify my use of detail and color. The last I did was set a thick white stroke around each icon and added small cute dots around some shapes.
I received plenty of feedback over the course of the week. The best suggestion I got was to go back and add more accurate shadows and reflections to aid the abstract and simple concept of each icon. I love how the use of these repeated details helped my icons turn into better symbolic images.
There was a lot more that I added and worked on, the icons below show the changes from the draft to the final. With the extra help and feedback from my mentor and classmates, I fixed them up and was eventually happy with the way they turned out:)
