Here's my set for round 9 at somein30! The challenge was to create a set of style coordinates that would determine the style used for each icon. I did extra hard mode with x = contrast, y = brightness, z = grittiness and/or shininess.

Why these axes? The point of the round was practising range, and I already keep changing styles for each set so much that it's hard to think of any technical dimension I don't already vary a lot. But I'm not that adventurous when it comes to the basics - brightness and contrast, and maybe lighting. Most of my icons are bright and contrasted, yet I love the results when more skilled makers combine brightness and contrast in various different ways, and I think mastering these techniques is probably among the most important iconing goals (along with image quality and sharpening), since if they're off, the icon can't be good, yet any combination of brightness/contrast can be used well, as long as the result looks intentional.

I almost lost my mind trying to tell if an icon is bright enough or contrasted enough to fit a placement, so I made the brightness axis measurable: I used the Average/Mean color filter in PS to see what the average color of each icon is, and I looked at the value of Brightness that the eyedropper tool gives for this color. I decided that for the bottom rows this value must be 0-33%, for the middle row 34-67% and for the top row 68-100%. I did achieve that (just barely!), you can see the mean colors under the cut. For the contrast I just used subjective judgement. For the last column I used bright highlights and dark shadows in each icon, in the first column the difference between highlights and shadows had to be minimal (whether it's bright shadows, dark highlights or all midtones). The middle column was a pain in the ass: either highlights or shadows are toned down, but not both (or in some cased both could be a little bit toned down, but not by much). This column gave me so much trouble cause every little thing I did seemed to either increase or decrease the contrast too much, but I settled somewhere that I think works??

I wanted brightness, contrast, lighting and grittiness be the main focus in this set so I left these a lot simpler than usual when it comes to text and composition. There's absolutely nothing effortless happening here though. Also I tried to do more muted colorings again just to balance out the neon in the previous set, but I kinda slipped towards more vibrancy in some of the shiny icons, oops :p

Anyway, hope you find something to like! Please share your thoughts if you do, any comment would make my day ♥ Feel free to use any of these. Hover for fandom!

	GRITTY/MATTE
				[01-03]
				[03-06]
				[07-09]

	SMOOTH/SHINY
				[10-12]
				[13-15]
				[16-18]

Mean color of each icon that I used to measure brightness: