The Fleet 

Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts and put your tray tables up. I set out to create a group of Icons to resonate with those who loves airplanes, specifically, US military aircraft. I really wanted to create work that would resonate with my grandfather and people like him. As I worked through this process I made various stylistic choices in order to appeal to that audience.

I began with sketches and I was not sure what type of aircraft I wanted to base this set on or what perspective the audience would be viewing from. 

Through these sketches I started to identify that I wanted to work with airplanes specifically, and that I wanted view them as if I was staring straight down at them. After I reached these conclusions I moved into Illustrator and started working.

The rough draft of my first six icons were fairly simple, and I knew they were not where I wanted them to be but I felt as though I was on the right track. 

After sharing this first version of the set, I received some valuable feedback on a variety of topics. The most helpful bit of advice was referring to adding dimension to the icons through light and how it would reflect on the planes. This allowed me to explore more options and move towards them being a more three dimensional image opposed to how flat they were before. I also recieved tips on color and how even if it is the same color, it can appear differently on different backgrounds.

I took the feedback I had received and I worked to implement it by adding shapes with different HSB levels of the same colors to display light reflection and illustrate height differences in separate items. I also had explored using red throughout the set, but ultimately I decided against red. After taking all of the feedback I received, I arrived at my final set. 

I wanted my design to reach a crowd that is embodied by my grandfather, a military veteran and an aviation enthusiast. I decided that taking a more lifelike approach with accurate proportions as well as accurate colors would help my design accomplish my intentions more than a more cartoonish approach to the planes would have. In the first image you saw, I positioned the planes as if they were in a fleet to further resonate with my audience and draw on the characteristics of my subject matter. 

This project was much more time consuming than I had expected, but in order to reach the quality I was chasing it was necessary. Have a nice flight, my friends.