A two-step optimization method is proposed to design a compact single-surface far-field illumination system, satisfying the requirements of illuminance uniformity and light control efficiency with h/D less than 3:1. In the first step, the conventional tailored edge-ray design (TED) method is employed to generate prescribed illumination distribution for the rotationally symmetric optical system, and an optimization process is added to reach a balance between illuminance uniformity and light control efficiency. Based on the improved TED method, we can construct an initial optical system more accurate than that obtained by point source assumption. In the second step, an iterative feedback modification process is employed to optimize the initial optical system, so that the degradation of performance due to insufficient control of skew rays is mitigated. Because the initial optical system constructed in the first step is accurate enough, the second-step feedback modification can converge to a satisfactory result within several iterations. As an example, a free-form rotationally symmetric lens with the height of h = 25 mm is designed for a discoidal LED source with the diameter of D = 10 mm. Both high illuminance uniformity of 0.75 and high light control efficiency of 0.86 are obtained simultaneously. The method can be further used to achieve more complex non-uniform illumination distributions. The design of an optical system with h/D = 2.5:1 and a circular linear illumination distribution is demonstrated.