Sebastiaan 2.0

Matt Gemmell reviews Icon Resource.

Matt Gemmell, legendary coder of Mac OS X source code and programming fame, has posted an expansive review of Icon Resource on his blog.

I genuinely feel like I learned a lot about what was previously something of a black art to me, and I couldn’t help but come away feeling enthusiastic about the prospect of creating some of my own icons for future software projects - or just for fun.

Check it out here if you’re interested!

Swiss Interface Syndrome.

I have been noticing a disturbing trend in custom interface design of third party applications for Mac OS X. As it is no longer an exception for software developers to build interface elements that are entirely unique to their application, the threshold for customizing other, system-standard interface elements is also lowered significantly. The ghastly trend I am about to describe is in existence due to this lowered threshold. In fact, I think this particular deviation off the beaten interface path would have been far more frowned upon a few years ago, when Mac interface designers were more conservative in using custom UI elements in general, and Apple disapproved of it more fiercely. Today, however, it won’t even stand in the way of scoring a design award runner-up, as my examples will go to prove.

Continue reading Swiss Interface Syndrome….

Me on Pomcast.

If you’re eager to hear a bit more about my work, my person, and the whole story with Apple, I recommend you listen to Pomcast’s latest English episode, where I and StuFF mc discuss Apple, graphical user interface design and a bunch of other things.

UI Drawing Week ‘08

Uli Kusterer remarks how this week was full of visual UI goodness; from the blog post by Sean Patrick about designing and implementing resolution-independent Leopard-style buttons in Mac OS X, to the release of Icon Resource (featuring Alastair’s interesting thoughts on the videos in the package) and a podcast about making custom views.

I also found John Gruber’s ‘Firefox vs. Safari’ post interesting, being in my Latitude browser state of mind, as he prefers Safari over Firefox for its, yes, superior UI. I’ve complained about this before on the blog, and it seems I am not the only one.

Also, talking about interface design and resolution-independence, I hope you have not missed the video of Cabel Sasser’s C4[1] talk - he posted the slides and a Photoshop file used in the presentation on his blog this week. Be sure to view the video if you haven’t seen it yet!

Perspective Shift.

First off, let me thank everyone for such a great reception of Icon Resource. The first 24 hours of its existence were fantastically exciting, and I’ve gotten an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. I will consider all your input carefully. Now, I wanted to tell a story that relates a lot to, amongst things, Icon Resource and its genesis, but most importantly, radically changed the way I look at life and the things I feel strongly about.

It has been waiting to be written since late January of this year. It was around that time, late into the evening, in my brand new little office, that my laptop made the familiar ‘bling!’ sound of new mail. I got off from my chair, opened Mail, and found an email from a representative of Apple. They were wondering if I would be interested in a position at Apple in Cupertino.

Continue reading Perspective Shift….

Flow goes live.

After the beta times, Flow, the application whose signature icon I designed, has gone live. This great FTP client has been essential to be since the first beta builds, and it’s a joy to see it being released now. Congratulations to Brian of Extendmac on this momentous day!

Flow’s icon has been received with a lot of praise, as it’s safe to say about 65% of all my assignment inquiries begin with ‘love your work, […] especially the Flow icon!’. You can grab Flow for $29 or download a free trial here.

IconResource Launches.

The day has come, and Icon Resource, the biggest project I’ve spearheaded since the start of my own company has gone live. You can now go to the Icon Resource website to watch a sample video, read more about the contents, or acquire your access to the polished Icon Resource member area.

Continue reading IconResource Launches….