A New Fresh Look for Our Menus’ Icons + A Little Bonus!
Hi there! It’s Chloe, here for today’s Patreon post. A few months ago, Alex tasked me with something I was not used to doing, but that I was game for: drawing custom icons for the game’s menus! So for this post, I will be showcasing the work that went into our revamp of the Build Mode menus and the Paramaker’s. This post is exclusive to Patreon, so please do not share it! Thank you!
Rethinking The Menus’ Organization
One of the first things we had to do before I set off to create all the Build Mode and the PAM icons was to re-think how the game’s objects were currently organized. Was it easy for the players to find what they wanted? Were some objects not in the right categories? Could we simplify the way every item was classified?
While Sonia rethought how menus would work in the Paramaker, I focused on organising the Build Mode’s menus. Once that was done and we were satisfied, off I was to the drawing board!
Choosing Our Style For The Icons
Until now, we used icons from a website we were paying the rights for. However, it made it that sometimes, we couldn’t get a unified look for our different icons, since the icons on the website are done in many different styles and by different artists. We also needed some specific stuff, so we decided to start creating them in-house from now on. (Some icons that we didn’t make remain in the game, as placeholders for future icons, besides other reasons).
Before starting production for these, I did a few tests to ensure the look we wanted for the icons. We wanted something simple and cute, and that was easily readable.
I tried different brushes for different renders on the linework and also experimented with styles quickly. While some options were interesting, some didn’t work for the contexts the icons would be used in – 3D/isometric drawings work fine for furniture items, but not so much for the Paramaker!
Once we decided what we liked the best from the previous different tests, namely the sticker style, it was time to try illustrating a few icons for different Build Mode categories. At this stage, we were able to iron out some technical issues (such as the white lines all around the drawings!) and see what worked and didn’t work visually. Overall, we were happy with how these turned out, so I had to OK to move forward.
Creating Icons For The Build Mode And Paramaker
I decided on some details, like the width of the line work and the width of the stickers, before getting started! Since we were about to start the playtests for the Build Mode, I prioritised creating the icons for it. Overall, just for the Build Mode, I hashed out over 130 different illustrations.
We have everything covered with these! These are just for the Build Mode.
Here’s a closeup of a few of them. You can see a good variety: icons for specific furniture items, rooms, tools, paint, decor, etc!
Similarly, I created around 120 drawings for the Paramaker. Here are just a few!
This close-up view showcases a lot of different category types! Clothing, shoes, body pilosity, body types…
I look forward to creating more of the game’s icons! We also got to have people test out the new menus with the icons during our visit to Montreal Comic Con, and the feedback we got was very positive! I was happy to hear that our hard work had paid off.
A Little Bonus
Quite unrelated to today’s topic of choice, I also wanted to show some of the fun things Sonia and I created during our hack week. For those unfamiliar with our previous editions, it is a week that the team dedicates to working on features that aren’t a priority, but that we personally want to add to the game.
Sonia and I ended up working on things that correlated a bit. And so, I present to thee, to conclude the week… the expanded Miki cinematic universe.
I hope you all enjoyed this week’s post, with my off-topic bonus feature! Have a nice one!
Chloé (・ω<)
Comments (97)
the body pillow 😭
Great work on the icons :)
wow thats neat
The sticker style icons stood out to me the most, so I’m glad that’s what you went with! Love all the care and attention to detail going into every aspect!
As much as I love y'all being creative and innovative with your ideas, I hope you won't put too much focus on this whole anime-genre thingy. Reading it in combination with lore made me kinda cringe, I hope you'll stick to more traditional things. Like having some of it in the game, but it's definitely a little too special imo. I'd rather have your resources be spent on things like wind chimes, billard, fish tanks etc. than a body pillow tbh. This is too much, no offense.
I'm gonna be honest, I love the new icons and as I was reading I was hoping you would go with the stickers. 😆 So I'm haiku that's the new direction for the icons. Also my Para is gonna have a Mikka obsession in the game like I've had a Sailor Moon obsession since I was like 12, haha.
The Miki items are so cute! I'm so happy to see the team starting to shape this game's personality and lore! I love to just sit and imagine the future, when gamers will come to make easter egg/lore explanation videos on youtube
I like this. BUT. It is quite cluttered on the eyes still. Especially the build mode part. It's a little less cluttered in paramaker. But having to click through 5 different menus to reach what you want is quite, tasking
I like that it’s larger than some game menus. Sims menus are pretty cluttered too. I like it better than the original so far. I’m sure they will find ways to improve it
Definitely grossed out by the bodypillow but I guess then we can create creepy incel characters
with all respect, body pillows are awesome! I have lots of friends that have a body pillow of their favorite characters, some are for jokes, some are just cuz they like the character, a lot of them just leave their body pillows in like, a chair in their bedroom, quite funny actually lol
I love the Gradient icon style.
I'm already a Miki fan !
I can't help it, the icons are nice but I'm still a fan of the more "serious" look of the first image. Nevermind, I'm sure this won't prevent me from enjoying the game when it comes out.
I think the more recent version fits the style of the game a lot more and falls more in line with all the other UI elements throughout other parts of the game
Et les icônes sont parfaite bravo :)
J'adore la collection de Miki ♥_♥
Color coding them (in some way) could be useful too
Awesome!
Hello, I’m not sure if this is possible, could you make a custom/favourites or will it have a search bar? No pressure. Thank you
in one of the pictures you can see in the build menu the bottom most icon is a magnifying glass, so i'm sure you can search :)
I really like the sticker icons, they are very cute! Although, like someone else has suggested in the comments, maybe it would be nice if they were coloured? Or at least, when you go over them with your mouse, they become coloured?
I definitely like the menus and the icons! 😀
Very cute, though I have to say text can sometimes be useful when you are trying to find things. Unless I missed it, would it be possible to see the category in "alt text" when hovering, maybe? Not 100% sure it's that necessary though so I definitely wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it. I'm sure randomly clicking will also allow a user to eventually orient themselves to where everything is! 💚
Yes! When you hover over the category, descriptive text pops up :) that way if you aren't sure of an icon, you can always hover over to see what it is
I love these icons, it makes the look of the game more intuitive
I really like the new icons! Would it be possible to make them straight instead of slightly inclined in the Build Mode? I think they're much more legible that way, like in the PAM. That might also help with the ADHD some other comments are mentioning.
Hi! We decided to have them crooked as a style choice since they are stickers and sometimes they aren't stuck all the same! The UI and menus are still being regularly tested with playtests and people from different backgrounds to see what needs changes and improving, so things like these are still subject to change :) Thanks for your input!
I like the new icons! The only thing I would suggest would be colouring the icons (even just a single flat colour for each) to make it easier to scan through the sections quickly.
I agree with this! or highlight when the mouse waver on it?
I loved it! Simple and cute💚
these are awesome, fantastic job with the design! only one thing confused me - there seem to be two hobby items sections, one of which has a barbell as a symbol for exercise equipment (i assume). but the other hobby icon has a subcategory with a barbell? it's confusing 😅
Hobbies and skills maybe, but i totally agree with you, it's kinda confusing.
I love the icons and they fit well with the style of the game. :) Miki lore is cute too. :)
This looks phenomenal! One question though: When we hover over each sticker in the UI, will we be able to see a little text bubble pop up near the sticker stating specifically what each category is? I think that would be really helpful for those of us (specifically me, lol) who would frequently second guess which category is which when not given their specific names. Keep up the amazing work, team! ❤️
Yes, we have little tooltips that appear when you hover over the icons :)
UI looks very simple to read love it!
I love everything ❤️
I love the UI, but more importantly, I love the extra Miki merch and cosplay outfit and hair!
I think this new interface is actually really distracting and harder to navigate than the previous one. 😩 It feels extremely cluttered and the white with cartoony linework makes it hard to focus. While looking at the post I had to scan everything multiple times to find what I was looking for. I had to squint to tell what was going on in some of the icons as well, such as the thing between the chair and the lamp… is that a bookcase or a window? Maybe it’s because I have ADHD and find it hard to focus on just one thing. A clean, simple interface feels smoother to navigate and is much less distracting, whereas a busy one detracts from the aesthetic of the game, feels very obtrusive, and is hard to navigate. The gradient and glyph styles look a lot nicer and feel less distracting to me. I like what another poster said about making the active selection brighter somehow. Reducing the opacity of the entire interface may help it feel less obtrusive, and then whatever you’ve selected can become full opacity. You guys are doing amazing work, and I cannot wait for this game, but I think it’s important to get feedback on things like this. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks this 🤣
I do agree with you a little bit. Some of the icons are naturally harder to understand (like the bookcase which does kinda look like a window). I wonder if there could be an option to enable/disable a description of each category. I know that's a lot of extra effort, but for some people it would definitely help a lot!
love the sticker icons! they really add to the more artistic style of the overall game
I could cry I'm so happy with everything about this game!!
Wow! What amazing developments! The UI looks really smooth! All I ask is for automatic roofing when you guys start developing more on the Building aspect 😂 I miss that feature in Sims.
So happy it looks like this right now. The old UI was really ugly so this is a big improvement!
I really like how the UI has developed! I wonder if it might be nice if the menus that are not in use were dimmer so that the active submenu was a bit clearer visually. For example, in the pic that shows the musical instruments, the menus above the one for specific hobby items would be a bit darker, so the active menu sticks out a little more.
I really like this idea!
So cool 😎
Can you make a dark mode for the icons or have some appearance settings? Like invert the white and black in the icons or customize the ui palette. I have keratoconus and it's difficult for me to see bright colors. Would really appreciate this as an option ♡♡
Thanks for sharing! It's something we'll keep in mind when we'll discuss accessibility features :)
Miki needs a cute animal sidekick. Maybe a miniature man-eating monster.
When I saw the new interface in the recent post I immediately fell in LOVE and ADORATION with it. The icons are so cute and I love how they are "crooked". That, the design of the icons and the colorful backgrounds make the whole interface so adorable, cozy and fun! Its amazing what UI style alone does for a game. I knew you guys were gonna rework the interface but yall, as always, blew it out of the park! Early Access cant come soon enough
yeah my favorite dinamic the hack week!
I think this is perfect and unique for the game! I love miki and maybe she will be the npc music artist that my paras go to see in concert!!
I really like the new icons, i always felt that a more notebook kind of style would work with the game. The icons look like you would put them in a bullet journal of some kind. I also like the colorful tabs.
These look great! Just want to point out a couple of misspellings in the zoomed-in icons ("decoreative" and "personnality") that you should probably fix. I know they're not seen by players, but if you want your files to sort A-Z correctly and be easy to search for by staff, it would be better to have no typos. (Sorry, my work involves proofreading and I can't turn it off...)
Hi! Do not worry, the names of the files (the image in the post) is not the names of the categories in the game! When I export this many files at once, sometimes typos slip in -- but these do not appear in the game, they are just visible on our end.
Love the icons— I’m hoping the name of the category pops up when hovering over them, just for additional user experience :)
They have confirmed tooltips I think
Oh this RULES. I love the sticker look to the icons!! And the slight tilt they have in the menu adds so much character. The new menu designs are so clean and I think much more unique to the game. You guys are doing a wonderful job coming up with ui designs that’ll make it immediately recognizable as paralives
Will icons show what they are when you hover over them? Most are self explanatory but in the build mode image shown under assumig the office category, the one selected seems like a hobby/skill building section. It shows an easel and guitar. In that category it shows a paint palette and a dumbbell. In the unselected category next to it, it also looks like a hobby/skill section and its icon also has a paint palette and dumbbell. I would probably get confused on where I needed to look for stuff when they have the same items pictured
I was going to ask something like this, too. I absolutely love the icons but it would be great to at least have the option to have text, too (even if it's just when you hover over the icon) - I'm notoriously bad at remembering which symbol stands for which category!
I love that you guys take time to create purely for the fun of it. The passion we see you all putting into this game always gets me emotional.
The look and style of the icons are so cute. I really like them! ♡ and Miki?.. I don't know how to explain it... I LOVE IT. So sweet and funny and surprising. I just didn't expect this. This is my personal highlight of the post. Please don't get me wrong, the icons are great!
The icons look wonderful! 👍🏻
This is really cool! I love how Paralives UI design are approaching some sketch line style, it kind of pass the idea the player is planing the storytelling from a scketchbook! Although is early to ask, do you guys plan to create a more visual style for the relationship menu, or the needs and wants too? I apreciate the way it shows parafolk's thoughts, but along the time, so much text can be a bit tiring to pay attention (still, It's ok if this isn't supose to change much, I already love all of it ❤)
Hi! We have been discussing options, all the UI in the game that has been shown previously is still subject to change :)
As someone who has the high artistic non-talent capability of drawing stick people, these look great! I actually thought the sticker was most suited to the game and was delighted to see that was the one you chose! As does all the art in this wonderful game, the style looks absolutely wonderful to me! But also as a stick people drawing level non-talent, I also puzzled at a couple of them, purely from a functional user view: * the "Illcons flatten terrain" icon, I thought looked more like floor placement tool. I think it might look more like a "flatten terrain" tool icon if the icon had a bit of a hill that looked like it was being flattened, instead of just a line. I play a few other full-on world building games with a "flatten terrain" tool and they have a kind of hilly bit that looks like it's being flattened. I hope this makes sense. *also, I might be completely dense and looking at this particularly icon in completely the wrong way (I probably am, particularly with regard to my ...artistic...non-talent), but the "Illcons bikini top" in the next black and write picture doesn't look like bikini tops to me. I'm not sure what it looks like. Perhaps I really am dense and there's something there I'm not seeing. I don't mention this to criticise, (particularly since I'm quite visual art illiterate), more precisely because I'm a complete drawing non-talent, and thus representative of a lot of other visually non-talented people who might also enjoy this game, lol! So I'm thinking that other people might see these in a similar light. So in the interests of avoiding icon obfuscation, I thought I'd mention my personal puzzlement for your consideration, just in case I'm not alone in my visual art idiocy. :-))) I might add that all the other icons made complete sense to me. :-))
For the bikini top, I think it's because of the "hole" between the straps.
I smile really big every Friday! Keep up the great work! Miki, the icon she is already
The body pillow is so funny and cool
I'm loving the 'cut-out' style of the icons! I'm not sure why, but they remind me of paper cut-out dolls, clothes, and furniture I played with as a child. Love it!
I LOVE the style of the icons. My eye kept going back to it when I was looking at all the others, so I was extra excited to see that's what you went with. They look great!! Also, Miki is bad @$$. The wiafu pillow made me giggle, but seriously it looks awesome. 👏👏👏
Hi Chloe ! It's so cool to see all the variations you studied before landing on the final style for these icons, thanks for showing us these steps ! These icons are really cool, and given how many there are (and counting !), their readability is a testament to how well you designed them. It's also very interesting to see what is a category (...decorative windows ? interesting that there's a distinction, would that imply that some windows have functionalities the decorative ones don't ? or are some resizeable but not others ?) (Hotsuni ?) Miki looks fun ; this type of content is not usually my cup of tea, but at the same time I'm really happy that we're seeing "lines" of products around certain themes. It's the sign that we're slowly having a good number of basics, and can move on to more unique items ! Of course this was during hack week, so it was a bit out of the ordinary, but still, what a fun project. May I suggest a glowstick of some kind for another time ? When Miki holds surprise concerts in the park, obviously fans will want to come and cheer with their Miki merch XD
Oooh, a glowstick would be cool! It's a must-have for idol culture, ahah
And I loved the Miki stuff! This kind of lore is what makes a game something special.
Totally, I felt the same way that when I look rabbits or Henry Puffer on the sims, This kind of stuff is one of those things that make you fall in love with the game
Very good work. I have one question and one suggestion: - Question: There will be a text box with the name of the category if we wait a little over the icon? I think it would be cool if you don't know what that section is. - Suggestion: For people that are colorblind could be useful if you made an option to change the interface color to black and white. Instead of red, yellow and green messages about the para's needs, you could have different shades of gray. I understand that it could be implemented during early access, but I believe it would be a simple alternative that would increase the game's accessibility.
Hello! Yes, there is a textbox that pops up if you hover over the icon :) We are currently still discussing what we can do for accessibility, so thank you for your suggestion!
The icons look great!!! I know nothing is finalized, but from a UI design perspective I feel like the multiple long rows of icons in the Build Mode interface a bit confusing, distracting, and cluttered. Have you considered something like a breadcrumb? For instance you see the top row of items showing room types, but once you click on office the office icon snaps to the left and hides the rest, revealing the types of office furniture on the same row. Repeat for granular subsections. You'd obviously need some sort of 'Back' button to reveal the rest of the furniture types, room types, and other nested sections. I think this type of approach could really clean up the interface, which could also benefit people playing on smaller screens. Just my two cents, but everything looks fantastic as always!
Thank you for the feedback! We are currently having the UI tested by playtesters to make sure they find it easy to navigate and all, and we will iterate as we go depending on the feedback! so things are still subject to change, and I will forward your idea to the rest of the team :)
I see the phrase "hack week" and I instantly get SO excited!! MIKI!!! I love lore!!! Thank you so much for sharing the icon development process! They look great, and as everyone else has said, a perfect complement to the game's style!
Amazing work team, love every addition you add every post!
Beautiful as always !!! 🩷
Love the hack week expo!!
The icons look great! Love the style you went with. And Miki is an icon 🙌🏾
It’s my birthday today 🥰🥳 so this has made my day hehe! Thankyou devs, love you all !! 💕
Happy birthday!! Glad you enjoyed the post :)
Oh wow! The icons look simple yet informative! I’ve always chosen the simplest icon pack for my phone, and we have it for our future game, how lovely! Cheers for that Chloé
Omg I'm honestly so happy that Miki exists! I know it's not the main topic of the post, but I think that Miki is such a cool little thing that makes the lore something really believable. I'm excited for how this little character is gonna be used in the lore 👀 But also I love the icon style! The sticker look is really nice and fits the overall aesthetics very well. I can tell immediately what everything stands for. Really good job!
Those changes were key! I love the new version
Love the icons!! They're really easy to figure out and look so cute and in style with the art style. 😍
OMG, the icons look SO good 😊 very pretty to look at too
the sticker style stuck out to me in the options, i love that it was chosen!! great work! ◡̈
Love the style of icon you guys went with, it's adorable. Can't wait for the Miki concerts.
I can't wait for Miki Expo 2025! (And I really love the icons you did, great job!!)
This is soooo good! I love the style for this.