At the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020 I applied to the Adobe Creative Residency Community Fund to support one of my projects, an illustrative set of icons inspired by what I and everyone was experiencing.
Many weeks of lockdown went by, schools closed and opened and closed again, jobs and projects vanished… and then, one day, unexpectedly: a mail by Adobe! The support for my proposed project… called…
Most creatives have by now experienced a home-office-situation – either by choice or out of necessity due to the pandemic and various lockdown-scenarios. In my project I collect quirks, problems and delights of the home-office in the form of significant and humorous icons.
On the technical side there was a surprise challenge waiting for me: the project had to be illustrated on the iPad, since Adobe wanted to promote the newly published Illustrator app for this device (spoiler: it works)!
Ideation
While the individual experiences differ, there are a lot of subjects, that shape the situation of working at / from home in one way or the other for all of us. A tag-cloud with main topics and a lot of doodling helped me to come up with ideas for the illustrations.
Illustrator on iPad
After getting used to the handling of Illustrator on iPad it was great to enjoy the potential of working everywhere on the project! I found the app pretty intuitive and the tools I used most were the drawing and geometric tools, like Shapebuilder and Pathfinder. Also essential for me was the interaction between Illustrator on iPad and laptop, since the final artwork was composed there.
I recommend Illustrator on iPad to everyone in the vector-illustration-community who is looking for agile ways to work.
Elements
Different aspects of the main topics were depicted as small vector-illustrations to serve as building blocks for the final composition. The illustration style is clear, with sturdy outlines and has a restricted color-palette for a striking appearance.
Home office: office at home.
How are you doing today?
Objects: stuff that surrounds us.
Simple icons add another layer of variable meaning to the designs.
Final designs
The single illustrations and icons from the iPad were merged into a collage-like HOME / OFFICE tableau, where flat icons and more complex illustrations with a slight perspective make for a lively overall picture. For the use in different social media channels it is either divisible into a series of three or applicable as a single motive.
And now… witness a team of three people working together (more or less) from their homes – but be aware: chaos and home-decay are lurking everywhere and hopefully the WiFi will not crash!
It’s great to watch some classics during the day – that wouldn’t be possible in the office to this extent! Lockdown can be quite enjoyable as long as the sun is shining and the delivery finds the right apartment… – Ben
Glad I got this easy chair… and cool thing Adobe finally released **Illustrator for the iPad** – without I just couldn’t ignore the dishes that well… – Gretchen
The household is taking quite a dive… umm – the milk looks funny! What’s the baby doing there again… sounds like it's playing with the trashcan! At least the cat is doing nothing besides getting fat… – Mike
Taking it further
The HOME / OFFICE set is meant to be used as a toolbox of illustrative elements that can be combined with infographics or editorial content. While the current set is thematically focused I see an opportunity to expand it to adjacent topics (start-up culture, New Work, etc). I plan to make it accessible for other designers as a collection or icon-font in the mid-future.
Thanks to Adobe and all people there for supporting my project – especially Franziska Parschau and Jasmine Whitaker!
