Restrictions are an excellent way to give yourself a clear direction and to really push your creativity.
This exercise was to take a subject and explore it by creating 4 simplified, black & white icons that clearly communicate their subject. For this, I decided to choose one of my favorite films – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – which is a nerdy video-game feeling romantic action comedy by Edgar Wright who brought us other great titles like Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, and many more.
I chose to translate the threat of the “Seven Evil Exes” of Ramona’s past, the defeat and reward of coins for defeating those ex lovers, Ramona’s iconic huge hammer that somehow fits in her tiny purse, and the battle of the bands that the main character Scott is perpetually haunted by during the course of the film.
After many thumbnail ideas and style iterations, I settled on something bold and thick that can be easily read at small sizes or from modest distances. While I feel that most of them are pretty self-explanatory, the Seven Evil Exes requires a bit of breaking down. Scott Pilgrim is also very much a take on Japanese manga and so I decided to use the Japanese kanji language character of nana, their counting character for seven, and break it down into a black X and the rest of the character in white.
