After graduation from the University of Dayton with my Bachelor of Fine Arts, I wanted to be an illustrator. The first job I landed was at ASU as a "Graphic Design Specialist". Illustration was not part of the job description but I did manage to sneak in a custom icon here and here, and thus began my love of Iconography.
Bolstered by the desire to design and build websites that weren’t university-related, a few of my fellow friends and ASU co-workers founded an LLC called Paper Napkin Designs. We’d freelance outside of work and build Drupal sites for clients like law firms and even the Maricopa Democratic Party. I got to do all things design, which included coming up with Paper Napkins’ visual identity. And what is a brand without its own bespoke iconography?
Back when I worked at ASU I began building my first icon set. Inspired by
hlvticons I wanted to design icons that would look next to the FF Meta typeface, or at least that's how it started. As time went on I just kept adding to the set whenever an idea for a icon would pop into my head. Other times I'd make an icon based off an existing one to see how my version would look like. Eventually I collected some of my favorites and put them up for free from Meltmedia's blog.
I have a
whole case study about the icon set I built for guidebook. In it I go over the creation of icon variants, like the red, green, blue, and even the mono chromatic one...but you have all been deceived for another variant was forged in secret. Or at least I didn't mention it in the case study because it wasn't a full variant, only certain icons were given what I called "the hollow" treatment.
Have you noticed all the iconography across this site? After redesigning my logo, I figured an icon set should go along with it. Originally, each icon was meant to represent sections in my case studies, but, well… I couldn’t help myself and kept going.