Picked vector over pixel art for an icon set and nearly lost my mind

I had to make 30 icons for a client dashboard last month and I went back and forth for 2 days on whether to do them in Illustrator or go pixel by pixel in Procreate. I chose vectors because I figured scaling would be easier later and I wouldn't have to redraw anything for different screen sizes. But man, trying to get tiny details like a 12px wrench icon to look right with anchor points was a nightmare. I spent a whole Saturday tweaking bezier curves on a gear icon that honestly looked fine after 10 minutes. Next time I'll probably just do a hybrid approach, rough sketch in pixels for the small stuff and then trace it as vector for the bigger versions. Has anyone else found a sweet spot between raster and vector for detailed small icons, or am I just overthinking this whole thing?

2 comments

2 Comments

noahw531d ago

The amount of time I've spent convincing myself a gear icon needs to be mathematically perfect when nobody is ever going to zoom in on it at 500% is honestly embarrassing. I did a set of social media icons last year and spent three hours getting the Instagram camera gradient to look smooth in vector form and then the client asked me to just screenshot a png from their phone. You might be overthinking it but honestly thats half the fun of icon design if you ask me.

river_wright1d ago

That exact camera gradient thing hit me too. I found just building a five step gradient in Illustrator and calling it close enough saved me about two hours on the next round.