Skillshare Announces Our Top Five Icon Design Challenge Winners!

If you were asked to design a set of icons for Skillshare, what would you create?

Skillshare’s first-ever Icon Design Workshop launched this June to help students test their graphic and icon design skills. As a part of the two-week curated class curriculum, we asked participants to use what they were learning to design a cohesive set of icons for different aspects of Skillshare’s brand. The stakes were high: we promised to incorporate the very best entry into Skillshare’s platform and marketing materials - which meant that for one talented student, more than 5 million users around the world would see their designs every day!

Their assignment wasn’t easy. Students had to design individual icons to represent the following elements of the Skillshare experience:

• Play (video)
• Download (video)
• Search (our site)
• Student Profile
• Teacher Profile
• Notifications (activity or alert)
• Save (my project or content)
• Discussions (chat or comment)
• Learning Path (track or progression)
• My Classes (list of videos)

And they had to develop their set fast. Students only had two weeks (June 18--July 2)  to complete the workshop classes and submit their icon designs for review.

Icon sets were blind-judged on style and alignment to Skillshare’s brand mark. Sets had to be unique, but include enough internal repetition that individual icons felt visually cohesive. Every icon had to be as recognizable to our international students as to those in the U.S., and they needed to be simple enough to be used on a small scale but still easily read. Finally, the set had to have the potential to be built out with additional icons down the road. Skillshare’s platform is growing by leaps and bounds, and we need an icon set that can expand along with us!

Our talented students rose to the challenge. We had over 500 people take our Icon Design Workshop and 158 of those students submit icon projects for review. Our Marketing and Product Design team received so many fantastic projects that we decided to expand our list to recognize the top five student icon set submissions -- and of course, the big winner.

The Top Five:

5. Raphael Thirouin

We placed Raphael Thirouin in our top five because we were especially drawn to how he used negative space and line gaps to make his icon set more memorable. We were impressed by his icon’s uniform size and weight, consistent style, and the particularly unique download icon that he developed.

As a reward for his great work, we are giving Raphael a free year-long Skillshare Membership!

4. Crystal Gordon

We thought Crystal Gordon deserved significant recognition for how well she carried her unique style through every icon in her set. We appreciated her work’s recognizability and gender-neutrality, and that she gave us a menu of options to choose from if we needed to fill icons with color or shrink them significantly.

As a reward for her great work, we are giving Crystal a free year-long Skillshare Membership!

The Runners-up

3. Amir-Abbas Abdolai

We loved Amir-Abbas Abdolai’s simple, unique take on the icon assignment. He created a professional-looking set that is still stylized and dynamic enough to allow for future icons to be built out in the future. We were also impressed with how thorough Amir-Abbas was - his submission included several unique icons with alternative options and animations. Quite a lot of work to create in a two-week timespan!

As a runner up, Amir-Abbas will enjoy a free, year-long Skillshare Membership!

2. Rob Bautista

We were impressed with how well Rob Bautista conveyed his unique, fun style while keeping his shapes, line, and line weight (among other elements) consistent. We particularly loved his magnifying glass icon - he got the proportions just right!

As a runner up, Rob Bautista will receive a free, year-long Skillshare Membership!

And the winner is...

1. Daniel Losant

Congratulations to Daniel Losant, the designer behind our winning entry! We were blown away by his clean, professional and unique style, with how well he aligned his icons to our beloved Skillshare brand mark, and particularly how he was able to create a custom grid for each icon to ensure that they stayed consistent with one another.

As our winner, Daniel will receive a cash prize of $500, a free year of Skillshare Membership and will see his icons featured across Skillshare.com. Great work, Daniel!

Thanks to every student who participated in our Icon Design Workshop and congratulations to our Top Five favorite submissions. We can’t wait to see what you create next!

Interested in participating in one of Skillshare’s next Workshops? Check out this list to see what we have in store.