For our second assignment in my GRC 41 class, the instructor asked us to develop a set of “holiday web icons” using the shape tools and lines tools in Adobe Illustrator CS4. The tools used included: square, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, star, flare, line, arch, spiral, rectangular grid, and polar grid. We had to make 55 icons total, on one 8.5 by 11 inch artboard. He asked us to start with the basic main tool shape and then add elements, gradients, colors, line strokes, shadows, etc. We could focus on any one holiday or season. I chose summertime.

I have used Illustrator very little in the past, so the program is basically completely new to me. These icons are pretty simple due to my limited Illustrator skills. But also, web icons are meant to be simple, because they appear very small on a website within text. I do hope to revise this assignment for the final portfolio. But for about 10 hours of work and some light reading in my Illustrator quickstart guide, I’m pretty happy with it.