Welcome to the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. Cue “The Office” theme song.
I love the unique personalities of each of the characters from the popular television show “The Office.” I wanted to play around with the idea that you can know and feel each of their personalities by having limited facial features. In this icon set, I only created their face, hair, eyebrows, and glasses. Let’s take a look at the process of creating these 12 icons.
Sketches
I initially did my sketches with eyes included. I wanted to have them all looking at each other from different directions. I was trying different face and eye shapes but when I started to simplify, I realized that they weren’t really necessary. I began to focus on what made each character look like themselves and they each have unique skin tones, hairstyles, and eyebrows. I didn’t realize how much the eyebrows really do influence the facial shape and personality.
Initial Ideas
These were my first ideas that I experimented with on Illustrator. I was really struggling with Jim’s hair. His hair is all over the place and never really looks the same. I was having a hard time creating his personality. So, I got some feedback and changed the look. Here’s a look at the progression in his hair.
Making Changes
I thought that there wasn’t enough hair, so I decided to add another layer. As you can see, this looks like a crazy mess and nothing like Jim. I needed to simplify the wavy hairs into a move fluid movement. I combined more of the hairs together and created more waves that I feel captured more of Jim’s personality.
I also got some feedback on moving down some of their eyebrows and adding some more highlights to the hair as I did for Pam. Most of the time we just stick the eyebrows at the top of the head when in reality they are pretty much halfway down. It was hard to find the right highlight points or how to make Phyllis’s hair look curly. I asked a lot of friends and roommates and they helped with hair colors and gave me pointers on what highlights looked the best. I also changed the color of Meredith’s clip and added hair highlights.
Final Product
I took all the feedback into consideration and concluded with these simple icons representing each character from “The Office.” I’m glad I got positive reactions from other Office fans who could easily point out and laugh at the similarities the icons had with their human counterparts. Who is your favorite character? Thanks for coming along to see the process! Cue theme song.