Introduction
My task was to create a variety of different icons for a movement of my choosing. The movement that I chose was environmental justice, which would then be cut out in vinyl on a plotter to make stickers. The goal is to choose three variations of the icons inspired by the core concept, to be used as logos and stickers through the use of Adobe Illustrator.
Concept and Sketching
In the beginning, I at first traced out some related stock images from a simple internet search that related to environmental justice, including a photo of soil, a windmill, and a solar panel. None of these would be used as the end product, since they were only meant for inspiration, but it then led to me creating my own images of a flower, a heart with waves inside, and stacked stones.
Variations
After creating my own images, I made hybrids of each icon, cutting the originals into pieces and putting them back together and playing with negative space. Some of the icons were unrecognizable as being related to environmental justice in the end, but I let my imagination and creativity flow. I wanted to see where it took me. One that I like in particular is a spiral with many dots in it, which is supposed to resemble a fiddlehead fern that hasn’t unfurled yet.
Results
In the end, I chose three of my icons for cutting. The first was one of my early ones, the flower with a heart-shaped leaf, the second was the icon that resembled a fiddlehead fern, and the last was an icon that took from the elements of the spiral and the petals of the flower, to make almost a windmill shape. I decided on these three because they were the icons that evoked the feeling of nature the most to me, with few sharp edges or points and a more organic, plantlike look to them.