Jon Hicks

Jon Hicks is an English designer who owns his own design studio called Hicksdesign. Hicks is best known for the design of the Firefox log (see below). He works in a multitude of areas in design including brand identity, logo design, iconography as well as web and product design. I wanted to research Jon Hicks as I am aware he is a very influential iconographer in today’s design scene and I wanted to get a deeper understanding of his particular style and approach to designing icons, to help me with my own icon designs.

Hicks Icons

Jon Hicks has a wide array of icons he has designed over the years, including icons for Spotify and Skype, and iconography is a speciality of Hick’s. I came across this particular set of his icons on the Hicksdesign website and I really liked the style and form they carry, as well as the visually impressive colour palette. I decided to replicate a couple to get a feel for the composition, I have included my re-creation below.

I came across a quote on the Hicksdesign website under ‘Iconography’ that stated,

‘The process of reducing an idea to its’ simplest, but still recognisable form is joyous!’

This informs me that Hick’s and his team take pride and enjoy the process of creating simple and straightforward icons, their aim is to reduce the complicated and complex outcomes and create the simplest forms and icons that they can.

Colour palette

I created an Adobe colour palette based on Jon Hicks icon set, see below.

Reflection

Jon Hicks has a get way with designing icons, they are simple and effective but also enjoyable to look at and analyse. The more artists and iconographers I research the more I have noticed similar approaches and outcomes, in the idea that they are all minimal and straightforward to understand. This is what I want my icons to represent too, some icons I have looked at are more lavished in detail than others but moving forward I want my own set to be uncomplicated and clearly readable.