While working at T-Mobile, they asked me to create an interface for the BlackBerry. The first set of icons that I made were vector illustrations that I created in Adobe Illustrator.
I met with the project manager, we talked about what was needed and I created icons one at a time. After creating the icon illustrations, I created a rollover state (A folder opening and closing...).
In this example, you can see the "Search Messages" icon rollover.
Though they liked the icons, they were looking for a more photographic look and feel, which lead to the next version.