3D Icon Set — Children’s E‑Commerce Platform
66 bespoke 3D icons for a children’s e-commerce platform — modelled in Cinema 4D to lock the look, then scaled out with AI generation, delivered in three weeks as a structured Figma library
- Problem — A children’s retailer’s flat, emotionless stock icons looked identical to every other e-commerce platform
- Insight — Make every icon feel like a toy you’d pick up — googly eyes + a stitched label tag are the consistency engine
- Solution — I designed 66 toy-style 3D icons across 8 categories: hero icons locked in Cinema 4D, scaled via AI, shipped in Figma
- Outcome — Delivered a production-ready 2048 px set in ~3 weeks with a 2-tool pipeline (C4D + AI); client name withheld
The icons had to feel like toys — physical, tactile, something a child would want to pick up
A children’s online retailer commissioned a bespoke 3D icon system to replace the flat, emotionless stock iconography across their e-commerce platform. Two problems: category icons were functional but cold, and promotional icons (sale, returns, loyalty) looked identical to every other shop on the internet. The brief asked for 66 icons across eight functional categories — navigation, checkout, seasonal campaigns, baby care — working at thumbnail size (64–128 px on-screen) with no vector editing skill required from the marketing team. Client and platform name withheld at their request.
Framing the problem as emotional rather than functional was the right starting point. The “feels like a toy” constraint decided every later icon
Googly eyes + a stitched label tag: a two-element consistency engine
Two details run through the whole set. Googly eyes — bulging, semi-transparent, slightly asymmetric — give each object a personality without adding a face that competes with the object’s identity. A small fabric label tag hangs off each object with a one-word descriptor in lowercase (Cart, Dream, Roar). The tag doubles as an accessibility affordance and brand detail. Committing to this system early meant every new icon was a variation on a solved problem, not a new design decision.
Colour palette: warm, saturated primaries with pastel accents, no black fills — shadows are always warm-tinted, drawing from classic children’s toy brands: primary red, sky blue, sunflower yellow, mint, lavender, coral. Surface language: high-gloss, inflated, rounded — reminiscent of rubber squeeze toys and 1990s Fisher-Price plastics. Every object reads as soft even on screen.
Palette and surface language — warm-tinted shadows, no black fills, glossy inflated forms
Lock the look in Cinema 4D first, then scale with AI
A small number of hero icons were modelled in Cinema 4D — rounded bevels, inflated proportions, a warm three-point lighting rig tuned to mimic product photography. These set the visual target: surface gloss, eye style, warm-tinted shadows, overall toy register. With that look locked, the remainder of the 66 icons were generated with AI (Hugging Face diffusion pipeline), anchored to the Cinema 4D references so silhouettes, materials, and lighting stayed consistent across the whole set.
The 3D references are the reason the AI output reads as one family rather than 66 separate generations
Final assets were cropped to 2048 × 2048 px on a neutral background and delivered as PNG. Total timeline: approximately three weeks end-to-end. Locking the look in C4D before AI scaled it is what kept a 66-icon set this size manageable on a two-tool pipeline.
Hero icons modelled in Cinema 4D to lock the visual target
AI output anchored to the C4D references — one visual family
66 icons, eight categories, one Figma delivery file
All 66 icons are organised into eight sections in the Figma delivery file, mapping directly onto the platform’s navigation hierarchy: Navigation & UI (7), Shopping & Delivery (13), Baby & Newborn (11), Toys & Play (10), Education & Creativity (8), Clothing & Accessories (7), Health & Care (4), Seasonal & Celebrations (6). Each frame is named using the convention Icon — [Name] for easy asset export.
Export settings delivered to the development team: 2× PNG (1024 × 1024 px) for standard displays, 1× PNG (512 × 512 px) for thumbnails and mobile, with WebP conversion recommended in the build pipeline for performance. The top area of the Figma file preserves the raw renders from the pipeline for reference; organised sections start at y ≥ 30,000 with icons at 2048 × 2048 px, 200 px gaps, 400 px section padding.
Production-ready at delivery; the set defines the emotional register for the entire platform
The client received a fully structured, production-ready icon set covering every core e-commerce touchpoint — navigation, checkout, trust signals, product categories, and seasonal campaigns. From a design-systems perspective, the icon set establishes the emotional register for the entire visual identity: every future UI addition should be asked “does this feel like it belongs in the same toy box?”
The naming convention Icon — [Name] is Figma-export-friendly and alphabetically sortable, and should be enforced if the set is extended by a different designer. Any new icon brief should start by identifying which of the eight sections it belongs to — if it doesn’t fit, that’s a signal to either extend the taxonomy or reconsider whether the icon is needed at all.
66 icons in three weeks, solo, because the look was locked in Cinema 4D before AI scaled it — a well-defined brief and direction settled early did the rest
