Icon Snack 02: Designing chubby icons for Marvel

by Budi Tanrim — first appeared on my newsletter.

I have teamed up with Marvel to create 90 free icons that you’ll enjoy.

First of all, I’m sorry this series has been rolled out quite slow — all these client works really slammed me out! Anyway, I’m excited to share my process on this one.

Marvel approached me back in March 2016 to design this small set, specifically for their audience. And it took me a couple of weeks to finish it.

“Make the icon looks Chubby”

Murat, the Co-Founder of Marvel, personally, wanted to have the icon that looks somewhat chubby. The word of “chubby” has been repeatedly used and be one of my concern.

I’ve never done this before. I was worried about a lot of things, but better get myself together. So, I start with a simple goal. How to make square looks chubby?

The square has conquered! Now, knowing that the squircle shape and rounded corner can help to give the chubbiness effect, I move on to the next step.

Prototyping

With the same principle, I showed a couple of icons to Marvel team. They like it, but thought it’s too much curve and wanted to reduce it a little bit.

Snap! The curvy line is half-pixel. Not perfect!

We found that the icon is not pixel perfect and has decimal numbers. This is a serious problem, potentially make the icon looks blurry and not sharp. Especially when the icon moved a lot.

Later on, after quick investigation — I find that the curve has caused this problem.

With a simple fix can make it perfect, by manually adjusting and ensure the curvy line is not floating in between the grid line, we have been able to make everything perfect without loosing the chubbiness feeling. And that’s what bring us to the final set.

Now, the icon is released and can be downloaded on Marvel Blog. Please check them out, and let me know how do you like this set!

Download the icons on Marvel Blog (For Ai & Sketch)

Like this article will support me to write and share more design ideas.

Warmest,
Budi

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