A rural hospital uses the following icon system to depict Male, Female, Cardiology, Casualty, Ophthalmology and Neurology. The hospital then decides to expand, and opens four new wards which are as follows:
\begin{itemize
COVID-19 Isolation Ward
Cancer Ward
Paediatric (Children) Ward
Maternity Ward
Create icons for these four wards using only BLACK colour. All icons should follow the same visual language. Draw the icons in squares provided in the answer booklet.}
Evaluation criteria:
Consistency with given examples
Composition
Clarity of communication
Show Hint
When designing icons to fit an existing set, the most important rule is consistency. Before you draw, write down a list of the design rules you can observe from the examples (e.g., "uses human figure," "uses negative space," "no fine lines"). Then, make sure your new designs follow all those rules.
Step 1: Fix a base silhouette.
Reuse the same simple human silhouette shape (or a close variant of it) used in the existing Male, Female, and Cardiology icons as the base shape for all four new icons.
Step 2: Attach one identifying badge per icon.
Add a single small symbol in negative space on the same chest area used in the Cardiology icon: an isolation box or mask shape for COVID-19, a ribbon for Cancer, a smaller child-proportioned figure or toy shape for Paediatric, and a rounded belly profile for Maternity.
Step 3: Keep the formula identical across all four.
Use the same "silhouette plus one badge" formula for every new icon rather than varying the composition icon to icon, so the four read as a matched sub-set.
Step 4: Finish in solid black.
Render each icon as a flat black silhouette with the badge cut out in negative space, matching the existing icons' colour and style exactly.
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Approach Solution -2
A third way to design these icons is to decide the negative-space symbol first, before drawing any surrounding silhouette, reversing the usual order of drawing a figure and then cutting a symbol out of it.
For each new ward, start by drawing just the identifying symbol on its own: a small virus-like spiky shape for COVID-19, a ribbon loop for Cancer, a simplified toy block or small figure for Paediatric, and a rounded belly curve for Maternity.
Once that symbol shape is fixed, build a human silhouette around it, treating the symbol as a fixed cutout that the body silhouette has to accommodate, rather than drawing a generic body first and hunting for space to fit a symbol in afterward.
This order forces the silhouette's proportions to adjust icon by icon so the symbol always sits clearly and legibly in the centre of the chest area, matching how the original Cardiology and Neurology icons appear to have been built around their own central symbols.
After each icon is built this way, test it in isolation at a small size, away from the other icons, to check that the negative-space symbol alone is still recognisable even without any context.
Finally, place the new icon next to the original six and confirm the black silhouette style, stroke weight, and centred composition all still match.
Designing the cutout first and the body second keeps the meaning of each icon as clear as possible, since the identifying symbol is never an afterthought squeezed into leftover space.
