This series first began as a challenge project where I was given the prompt to create a series of 12 graphic icons from a theme of my choosing to be complete in the span of a week. I decided to use National Parks as my subject matter because I was working on creating some concept designs for Rocky Fork State Park at the time, and that this project would help me develop more ideas I could integrate into the work I was doing for the State Park. Another reason why I decided to choose National Parks as my theme is because I was interested in doing some more research into the topic, as I come from a family that enjoys hiking and sightseeing, and I always like to improve my understanding of the natural world and efforts being made to preserve it.

The style I ended settling on was somewhat inspired by retro-futurism, which I thought would make for a fun juxtaposition to the subject matter as well as make sure that my designs felt modern and “crisp”. To push that style further, I ended up utilizing offset shapes and gradients to help imply texture and depth in the illustrated designs while still keeping everything relatively simple. I also used a lot of bold and concise color palettes to fit with the style, as well as to ensure that the compositions of each illustration could be legible despite their small size. Finally, I decided to center each illustration’s focus around an animal, insect, or unique figure that could be found in their respective parks to ensure that each icon would have point of interest that I could design the rest of the composition around.