My first icon set was a bit of a challenge. I first thought to myself, what would I enjoy creating an icon set for? Easy - travel. As the project progressed, I realized I wanted the set to be more specific.

Initially, I began by creating a list of items associated with travel, such as an airplane, passport, luggage, etc. From there I frantically sketched and collected all the ideas rushing through my brain on a whiteboard. Later in the week, I felt stuck and continued sketching it out on paper. Below are my first drafts of travel icons.

I really liked the ideas, but they felt too bland. I kept thinking to myself, what if these were all retro? I quickly tossed that idea out of my mind but it continued to resurface, and eventually I figured it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of research and test it out. That's when I decided to take it all back to the 90's. I began thinking -- what are essential travel items iconic to the 90's? Here's my list: Game Boy Color, chunky cell phone, disposable camera, Walkman, etc. Some might also include cigarettes or Beanie Babies. I was born in 1997 so I am by no means an expert despite being born in the 90's. I only caught the tail of the era. (I watched a lot of Friends this week-as research.)

Target Audience: 90's Babies, today's 25-30 year old young adults. 

Which destinations were most popular? From my research and understanding, Moscow's tourism boomed in the early 90's when the Berlin Wall fell and Russia finally became accessible to others after so many years of seclusion.

Throughout the project, I stayed organized by setting guidelines and labels in the layers panel on Illustrator. 

When it came time to ask for feedback, the general consensus was that taking it back to the 90's was a good call. I wasn't loving the first drafts. The other point of feedback that I received was about the Polaroid pictures. On the left below is my first draft and on the right is my final product. Generally, my peers felt that the first draft lacked detail. I was hesitant to change the vector, because I really liked its simplicity and felt it flowed nicely within the set. I decided to add a thin stroke to the black rectangle within the frame to add more depth, and it definitely looks much better. 

In the final stages of the project, I decided to create more unity by using the same colors when possible. The 90's were full of color, and it was important to me to both embrace and control that in my designs. I did my best to use only the colors represented below. 

If I had more time for this project, I would like to experiment with changing all the icons to be more circular. That'll be a project for another day. The fonts used in this icon set are Raleway, Bebas, Aubrey and Tapeman from dafont.com.

That being said, I am happy with my final product. I decided to limit the use of strokes in each design to create unity. I did my best to limit the amount of fonts I used. However, this was a bit more difficult as some of the items represent unique brands. In general, I remained consistent by keeping it in the 90's.