Happy Places Icons

At first I made very simplistic icons, slightly rendering existing iconography. The images didn't fit particularly well together, the thickness of lines especially frustrated me, they didn't look like a uniformed set of images. I did however really like the use of the smiley logo as the special features icon as it seemed fitting and not like it was assigned to any Happy Place specifically. I thought about using the screenshot icon as a camera at first but thought a landscape icon may be more appropriate as it references nature, a place away from social media which the camera icon is so typically used in and recognised in mainstream media, with connotations of selfies and Instagram for example which harbours social pressure typically pronounced with younger audiences. 

I then started to think about a more uniformed approach, leading with the smiley special features icon, I thought it would make sense to use this outer circle as a barrier for all my icons, this coincides with the circular aesthetic of Mandalas, symbolic of a microcosm of our universe. 

A Madala is a complex abstract circular design, the name itself is Sanskrit for "circle" with one identifiable center point.

(Use of colour purely so it was easier to design)

I really liked the first lighting icon's sun rays so kept these, image tracing it without the details in the center so it looked less like the sun and more an orb of light.

After using the pen tool to construct all of my icons, I tested them out on a colourful background. Clearly as they're white the visibility is quite a concern, however as the backgrounds of the Happy Places are mean to be videos, this worries me less as you will be able to see them the majority of the time 100% clearly and some elements may not be so clear infrequently due to the nature of the lighting of the videos.

I'm happy with these and feel they look a lot more consistent than my original designs which were also not sketched out by me which felt inappropriate, especially as this project has a personal place in my heart as something that helped me. Hence fitting the brief of resolving an issue which for me remains the stigma behind meditation not being particularly contemporary or accessible.