Bad apple design

We’ve already shown you some weird icon requests. Now it’s time to show some challenging ones. English idioms.

Yes, a user asked us to draw six English idioms icons and provided reference images. A picture is worth 1000 words (please don’t ask us to draw this one!):

Cutting corners, over the moon, and a bad apple were pretty easy to draw. We just got rid of unnecessary details and slightly modified the metaphors. Here they are:

For the kill time idiom, we draw an arrow-pierced alarm clock. And then spent some time deciding on the shape and color of the arrow tail to make it clear and visible:

Couch potato. For some reason, “the simplest solution is almost always the best” didn’t work, and we decided to avoid potatoes first.

But with that TV set, remote control, and the pillow, the icon was overloaded with details, yet it failed to convey the idiom.

So, we literally drew a potato on the couch. Perfect!

The most challenging icon was the best of both worlds. We tried two planets, then mixed a few other things (below are just some of them). But none of the concepts seemed clear enough. However, the mix of a camera with the old-school phone gets an award as the oddest smartphone metaphor.

So we decided to go abstract and played around with different geometrical shapes:

And finally stopped with the following variant:

So, when you make challenging icons, the devil is in the details, idiomatically speaking.

DIY bonus

You can visualize idioms in their literal meaning by combining icons. And guessing idioms by such drawings is a great way to spend an evening with your family or friends. Want to try some? Let’s go!

An easy yet hardly effective way to solve problems is to…

Opposite to the guy with his head in the sand

Never

If you loved the idea, you can easily make similar puzzles using Mega Creator or Lunacy, free graphic editors with built-in graphics.

Five simple steps: