We had a blast designing the icons and reveled in the challenge of keeping them simple, clean and recognizable. It was also imperative to style the icons consistently so that they felt a part of the same family. Shapes were distilled to their most basic forms, leaves were simplified and peas were rounded. The result is a family of vegetable icons that capture the essence and flavor of our most important food group.

Delicious enough to eat.

Small veggies.

For the Rocket Text icon, we designed a simple, retro rocket ship with three large windows (representing the three simple steps it takes to send a “rocket text”). All rendering was done in Photoshop, with a little shading help from SketchUp.

A simple and stylish iPhone icon.

We took our design cues from the existing website and crafted a series of retro-inspired artwork that fits together thematically and helps to unify the 5by5 brand, while allowing each show to retain it’s personality and individuality. The icons featured in the designs are all Symbolicons. We also designed the logo for the 5by5 parent company, Federated Robots.

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Album artwork for The Talk Show and The Conversation

Detail of the Artwork for The Dev Show

Artwork for Briefly Awesome and the Big Web Show

It took a while, but we finally decided that our royalty-free icons would do better if they had their own site. And so we made one. Visit Symbolicons.com to preview and purchase our custom-made icon sets. We even have some freebies!

Symbolicons.com →

UPDATE: We’ve moved the shop to it’s own domain! Visit at http://symbolicons.com.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, we have a passion for symbols. Be they pictograms or icons, graphics or glyphs, the complex simplicity can’t be matched. We enjoy symbols so much, we decided to make our own. And if parenting has taught me anything, it’s that everything can be so much more fun when we share. So that’s what we’re going to do. For a limited time, we’re offering all of our new symbols sets at deeply discounted prices. Heck, two sets are even free. Pop on over to the shop to see what we’ve been working on. Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date with special offers and new symbol releases.

When Evan McGee approached us to design a logo for his new consulting firm, he gave us one crucial piece of information that was instrumental in spurring our creativity… the name “Startled Marmot”. We took it and ran.

Since our initial work, we’ve had the opportunity to expand the Startled Marmot brand into one of their subsidiaries, Eureka! Trivia. To help round out the look of the new venture, we altered their iconic marmot to include a few different personalities. The question and answer sheets use our Block Symbols.

That's one startled marmot!

Beer Marmot, Einstein Marmot, Confused Marmot & Excited Marmot

Eureka! Trivia Answer Card

UPDATE: We’ve finalized the updated logo design and are sending the new brochure to print tomorrow. Up next: buttons, stickers & season passes. We’ll post actual design samples once they hit the racks. After that, we’ll get the new designs up on their website.

We love to design symbols. Be they pictograms (or pictographs), icons or logos, we can’t seem to get enough. The challenge inherent in condensing a thought, phrase or direction into a single image is lovely. It’s also fun. Add to that the need to keep a set of symbols stylistically similar and you’ve got yourself a romping good time – at least from our point of view.

In addition to the logos that we have designed, Sensible World has (so far) designed two custom symbol sets: Block and Retro Weather. These were built completely from the ground up and each had their own sets of challenges.

Block Symbols

Our Block Symbols were originally designed as part of the Addison County Chamber of Commerce’s website. Specifically, we used them to add visual cues to menu items. Since the launch of the website, we’ve worked with the Chamber on a number of other tourism-related materials and created new symbols as needed. While the original set encompassed only general categories (shopping, dining, etc), the added items focused on more specific services (auto-repair, construction, etc). We’ve fallen in love with this set and use it whenever appropriate, creating new symbols as needed.

What makes this set unique (at least in our minds) is that each symbol is built to a strict square proportion. While this has proved useful in a number of applications, it has been a godsend when designing wayfinding signs – where standard sign blade layout and sizes are key. We can easily create a swappable sign template without worry of the symbol exceeding its allotted area.

Each symbol is vector-based and was created at 3/4″ x 3/4″. This size was chosen a bit arbitrarily, but has worked out well. It’s small enough to avoid unnecessary detail, and large enough to be creative. It may seem that a symbol whose final size is 5″ x 5″ (sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller) has plenty of room for detail, but when you consider that it needs to be recognizable from moving car (at varying speeds), simplicity wins out.

Block Symbols →

Retro Weather

The problem seemed simple enough to solve. We needed some weather icons to include on a website for a new widget. Turns out we didn’t care much for the free (or even most commercially-available) sets out there. Not that they were all bad, they just didn’t fit the simplicity of the site we were designing. Too many had unnecessary gradients or shadows or gloss or detail. So we designed our own.

Why we call these icons “retro” is a bit beyond me, but there you go. It’s a name that, for one reason or another, has stuck.

Retro Weather Icons →

Our ultimate plan is to release these sets into the wild, but we’re still mulling over the best way to do so. If you have an idea, give us a holler on Twitter.

We’ve had a blast creating them and are psyched to share them! The current set consists of 240 unique icons. We’re in the process of expanding them to an even 300.

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The Block Symbol Set is versatile and unique.

The full set continues to expand.

Why Now?

The old website was bloated with text, a pain to update and lacked a bit on the personality front. The design was certainly clean, but it, well, wasn’t us. Four years later, we know that bit for sure. We’ve grown as a company and have a better understanding of who we are, how we design and what makes us happy. The new design is a bit more down to earth and gives us the flexibility to highlight our projects. We’ve toned down the bloat (only one page about our company, not six) and given more weight to our work samples.

Moving Target

The first draft of this new design was completed over 6 months ago. Our hope was to have it live by January 1st. But then a funny thing happened. We got busy. And as often happens with creatives, our design needs were pushed to the back of the queue.

Since then we’ve been chipping away at the new design during our few free moments. And here’s the thing: the new design isn’t finished yet. We’ve only uploaded a small portion of our portfolio. There are sure to be coding glitches. Regardless, we’ve decided to hit the “go” button. If not, we’ll continue – ad infinitum – to find reasons to delay the launch. We’re biting the bullet and will change things as we go. Bear with us!

And so, without further ado, goodbye old site, hello new. We’re psyched.

We have since had the opportunity to work with the Town Hall Theater on custom themed posters for their annual membership drives.

The 2010-11 Membership Drive Poster was influenced heavily by the work of Peter Max.

The interior of the restaurant had been styled to fit the theme of the previous tenant (50’s diner). We consulted on new colors and decorations to bring the atmosphere into this century.

The Jackson's on the River Logo.

One of the new signs at Jackson's.

In addition to branding, we designed a new wayfinding system for the City.

The core South Burlington logo.

District logos for South Burlington.

Department logos for South Burlington.

As part of the branding process, we created a sister mark for the Addison County Economic Development Corporation.

Other work for the Chamber includes the design of their annual Area Map & Guide, as well as a Parent’s Guide provided to new students at Middlebury College. We are also responsible for the 2008 redesign of their website.

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A new logo for the Addison County Chamber of Commerce.

Full logos for ACCOC and sister organization ACEDC.

The new sign for the Addison County Visitor Center.

The Annual ACCOC Map & Guide.

The Middlebury College Parents' Guide.

The new logo emphasizes history (the rotary dial), connections (link imagery) and moving forward (the color fade). It also provides a visual link to the corporate brand of Shoretel, one of Boston Wireless’s most trusted partners.

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The homepage for the new Boston Wireless

An interior page on the Boston Wireless website.

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Sensible World created all of the visuals for the site, including custom pictograms for both services and weather.

Visit the Site → See Related Project →

Almost every aspect of the new Addison County website is content managed.

In addition to searching by service type, users can adjust lodging results by amenities.

A full set of custom weather icons were created.

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Figure 53's new site brings the focus back to the products.

Trying out QLab is easier than ever.

A MacBook Pro created entirely in Photoshop.

The flexible design allows for each product to be featured with a custom color scheme.