Designing Rural‑Friendly Icons That Outshine 58 City: A Practical Case Study

1. Introduction

Due to a recent role change, I began overseeing design for 58同镇, the rural version of 58 City. The project launched a new app with tight deadlines, requiring a fresh icon set that would resonate with 700 million farmers and look better than the original 58 City icons.

58同镇 is a “village‑level” version of 58 City. By the end of April 2018 it had recruited over 10 000 rural partners, launched thousands of local service platforms across all 31 provinces, and attracted millions of daily visitors. The 2018 goal was to cover 20‑30 000 villages nationwide.

2. Master’s Mindset

Previous designers experimented with linear, flat, and other styles, producing many icon proposals. The evaluation criteria were simple: 1) Align with rural users’ preferences; 2) Appear more attractive than 58 City’s icons.

To achieve this, I asked fundamental questions about each service, inspired by a quote from a master designer about redefining the essence of an object before designing it.

3. Defining Rural Concepts

For each of the 13 service categories, I posed questions such as “What does a rural car‑pool look like?” and conducted extensive research with senior product managers, covering market overview, competitor analysis, user research, data, current issues, and future plans.

Examples:

Rural Car‑pool : Represented by a universally recognized hand‑gesture icon, adapted to local cultural nuances.

Job Recruitment : Replaced the corporate briefcase icon with a well‑dressed person to reflect the occupations common in villages.

Business Transfer : Shifted from a trendy shopping bag to realistic depictions of shop equipment, tools, and other tangible assets.

4. Infusing Rural Flavor

While the content became more “rural”, the visual style remained similar to 58’s brand, limiting the ability to surpass the original aesthetic. I experimented with realistic illustration combined with flat elements, using celebratory color schemes that resonated with village users.

After several iterations, I adopted a hyper‑realistic iOS‑style illustration for all 13 categories, refining details and adjusting proportions to achieve both local appeal and a higher perceived quality.

5. Brand Integration

The realistic style introduced complexity, making it harder to extend to other elements, and it lacked a clear connection to the 58 brand. 58’s logo features two key traits: vibrant colors and overlapping layers. I incorporated these by creating a visual language called “韵点” (Rhythm Dots), using overlapping circles to symbolize the connection of villages across the country, reminiscent of brush strokes in Chinese calligraphy.

This modular dot system can combine with realistic icons, offering flexibility while maintaining strong brand recognition.

Conclusion

Design goes beyond visuals; it requires understanding trends without being enslaved by them, setting standards while daring to break them, and delivering creative solutions that also meet business goals. This story‑styled case study shares the journey of creating a rural‑centric icon set that balances local taste with superior aesthetics, inviting feedback from the community.