Coffee Icons
Iconography - Visuals
- January 2020 - March 2020
- Adobe Xd, Illustrator
- Iconography, Visual Library
A simple introduction to coffee through icons. And how adding one extra icon to the set landed me a design placement when no one was hiring.
Turning coffee drinkers into coffee lovers.
Concept
The coffee icons were developed for the Bean Coffee App. The aim of this project was to create a digital product based on the topic of coffee. Bean’s mission is to turn coffee drinkers into coffee lovers.
I wanted to create a simple and minimal set of coffee icons that would clearly represent different coffee drinks and brewing methods. That's why I focused on clear lines and kept the colour palette simple so that the icons could be used in different settings.
Research
Nailing the simplicity required a lot of research and trial and error. As always, I started off with multiple quick iterations on paper and tried to find a fitting style. I had to keep in mind that the icons are at the center of this project, but adding an interview section to the app added a personal depth to it and made it stand out from other coffee apps. It also allowed me to connect with a local business and grow my reach in the design industry.
Placement/Internship
Little did I know that after I finished this project a pandemic would start. This halted a lot of jobs, and it became nearly impossible to find a placement for the upcoming year. Knowing that, I tried to attend as many online classes and conferences as I could to get experience wherever I could. Luckily, a lot of industry experts started giving away free lectures to keep us busy during that uncertain period. One of those people was Christopher Murphy.
Once a week, Chris would host the Espresso Lectures and post about them on Twitter. As he was doing them for free, I wanted to give something in return. I created the espresso machine icon, used Chris' brand colours and put together a twitter post.
Not only was he thrilled to see the "fan-art", he also offered me to create icons for his other lectures and later hired me as a visual designer for his own Start-Up.
Final Thoughts
I would've never thought that creating one icon could lead me to getting a placement, especially not during a pandemic. I was happy that my enthusiasm for design and this project was rewarded with such an opportunity. The coffee icons remain one of my favourite icon sets I've created to date.