For this project I wanted to do something that was unique and on a topic that I care about. I have always loved rock and roll as a music genre and I have been playing guitar since I was twelve years old. With the guitar being one of the most popular instruments in the world, I decided that I wanted to do icons of electric guitars.

When I started sketching out the guitars, I soon released that the most unique part of the guitar is the way the guitar is shaped. Different styles and bodies of guitars are associated with different types of music. For example, the Jaguar was the guitar of the grunge rock period because it was associated with Kurt Cobain. The Stratocaster is the face of rock because of guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. I wanted to show that in my icons so I focused on what kind of music the guitar was associated with.

The feedback I received was very helpful. I needed to add shadows to my guitars because was going for a realistic look. Shadows would show where light was hitting the object. I was told that the guitars looked good, but I needed to add something to the guitar to make them mine – come at it with creativity.

         I decided I wanted to make the guitars look like they were melting. That’s where the shape builder tool became my best friend. I used 5 to 6 rounded rectangles at the bottom of the the outline of the guitar and used the shape builder to combine the shapes. This gave the guitar a melting popsicle look. I did the same process with the bridges, pick ups, and knobs of each guitar. I then used arcs and the width tool to give a shadow to each of the part of the guitar that was melting.

My icons meet the objectives of the project because I was able to do something that was unique and something that I care about. The idea of the icon set was to incorporate guitars used in different eras of rock. I felt like the twelve icons that I picked in my set were some of the most influential to music. I was able to make them mine by making them look like they were a popsicle on a warm summer day.