11th Grade — Illustrator Deep-Dive: Building a Vector Icon Set

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Look at the icons on your phone's home screen. What makes them look like they belong to the same "family"?

🎯 Today's Big Question

How do we build a consistent set of vector icons using Illustrator?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Use the pen and shape tools to build 3-5 related vector icons.
Maintain visual consistency (stroke weight, corner style, grid) across the set.
Export the icon set in an appropriate file format.

🧰 What You'll Need

Computer with Adobe Illustrator

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Establishing a Style

Do Now (5 min, above).
Mini-lesson/demo (12 min): building a consistent icon style (stroke weight, corner radius, grid).
Guided practice (20 min): build one icon together as a class. Independent build, part 1 (8 min): start a second icon in the same style.

Day 2: Completing the Set

Do Now (5 min). Independent build, part 2 (30 min): complete 3-5 related icons, maintaining consistency across the set.
Export & share (10 min).

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

Day 1

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

Day 2

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

📚 Key Words

Icon Set: A group of icons designed to look like they belong together, sharing a consistent visual style.
Stroke Weight: The thickness of a line in a vector drawing, which should stay consistent across a matching set.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Icon set scored with a rubric: 3-5 icons, consistent stroke weight and style, clean vector construction.

Exit Ticket: What is one specific choice you made to keep your icons feeling consistent as a set?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week (e.g. every Friday, or your class's last meeting of the week), add your best finished or in-progress work to a running portfolio folder with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what skill or standard it shows. This becomes your formal Google Sites portfolio in Unit F -- keep it current all year so you're not scrambling right before your PBAT and portfolio review.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Illustrator Deep-Dive: Building a Vector Icon Set.” This project asked: “How do we build a consistent set of vector icons using Illustrator?” I used Icon Set by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 4: Creating and Modifying Visual Elements

🔗 Want to Learn More?

Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: The same systematic, matched-set thinking a Math class uses when building a consistent notation system.

Career Connection: This exact project appears as a portfolio piece on the Illustration and Digital Designer career pages.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Design an icon set (8-10 icons) for a real mock app idea, consistent enough to actually be used in a real interface. Start here: build just 3 icons first, not all 8-10, and lock a consistent stroke weight and grid size before making the rest.
Build an icon set illustrating vocabulary from another class (Science lab equipment, Math symbols) as real, useful study material. Start here: list the actual vocabulary words first, then build one icon and check it reads clearly before doing the rest.