I’ll be going places this August, combining holiday with my favorite pass-time (that’s work, in case you’re wondering), and I’d love to meet blog readers, clients, and other familiar faces when I’m in their vicinity! I’ve got two places that I’ll be attending for a significant amount of time, and if you’d like to meet me, be sure to drop me a line!

So where will I be? As with last year, I’ll be attending the Dutch musical festival ‘A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise 2008′ (links to last.fm); I can’t reveal my share of the custom design work I did until the festival’s commencement date, but if you’re attending, I can guarantee you’ll like it! The festival is split up in three days, and if you’re there, be sure to email, text, or call me to set up a meet (details can be found in my vcard on Icon Designer) - it’s always fun to get together.

More exciting (and outlandish) is my prolonged visit to the United States from August 21st to September 10th. I’ll have a week of vacation with my girlfriend from Sept. 3rd to Sept. 10th, and the rest of the days I’ll be working on something fantastic. I’ll be in San Francisco during that entire time period, so if you live near, or happen to travel there, be sure to contact me. I really look forward to seeing San Francisco (and the US in general, I’ve never been there before) and all the designers and great companies that take up residence there. Vacation tips are, of course, also appreciated!

It was a real challenge getting my girlfriend on a plane, as paper tickets are no longer used, and her surname is too long to fit on an e-ticket reservation, Expedia refused to offer her any service (any. Really, I’ve been told by an Expedia supervisor that she just flat out couldn’t travel at all), but fortunately it appears that the airline, BMI, has been very kind with us and solved all the issues with the reservation. We’ll even be on the same flight back, in two adjacent seats. In the end, it even saved me several hundred euro’s. So a tip for all of you; just don’t use Expedia.

That’s it for this short notice; I’ll be updating the blog soon with more released projects and work, and I’ll probably do a few posts from these two trips too, so you can stay informed of my adventures. I hope to see you there!

In the last month and few weeks, I’ve had an astonishing time in my life where I had a hectic moving of home and office, a set of challenging projects to work on with hugely talented people and world-class products, and other time-consuming challenges I had to overcome to get back to my regular life. As a young individual running his own startup business, it’s not very easy to get a mortgage and to learn about everything that comes with such a big step in life. I’ve also released a few details of what I’ve been working on, with a lot of updates coming soon, including the long-awaited Orion Extended freeware icon set that’s fully ready for replacing the system icons on your Mac or PC.

There’s also a small change in the blog; if you visit the Cocoia Blog on your iPhone or iPod Touch now, you will be served a special optimized version that’ll make it easier to read content, navigate your way around, and load on low-bandwidth data connections.

This version is powered by the powerful WPTouch plugin, by Bravenewcode. Mad props to them for making such a quality plugin available; I’ve applied some of my own design work on it and took out a few of its features because I found them less than necessary, but I can certainly recommend it if you are looking for a solution to bring your content to iPhone.

I hope you all enjoy this small addition to the blog as I prepare new and exciting content.

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.

Of course I was interested. Apple’s like a shining beacon of pure, exemplary design superiority to me. It’s the company that makes the computers, phones, and software I use and love more than anything else. But above all, freelancing had been harsh to me for a month, and living in constant uncertainty about your income is something anyone could live without. I sometimes, comically, equate my freelance work to the hunting of the earliest humans; you basically have to ‘hunt’ for your daily food. And sometimes, you fail to bring home the game.

However, it’s been no easy consideration for a young designer who lives in one of the smallest countries in Europe. If I’d want to work in the United States, I would have to jump through the hoops of getting an H-1B visa (I’m in no way interested in actually emigrating to the US) and leave behind… well, everything. My home, my environment, my friends, my beautiful and loving girlfriend - even the cats that so familiarly rub up against my leg each morning as I make my way to the other side of the room to give them food. And I’d have to trade the Netherlands, which is a liberal country with a strong anti-American sentiment, for the United States (albeit San Francisco, which does somewhat dampen the culture shock).

And in leaving behind all those things, I’d also leave behind Cocoia, my greatest passion in life, and I’d leave it to die. Apple’s employees are notoriously busy, and there is absolutely no way they’d let me run my outgoing miniature enterprise while I was working there. You can see now why it was no easy consideration, even with such an attractive position at that one special company.

I considered that any accessible visa would probably be valid for about 6 months at most, so I talked with my girlfriend. Of course, I wanted to weigh in her feelings about this matter. We could live with six months, although it was uncomfortably long as an uninterrupted period. We’d been living together for almost three and a half years now, if it wasn’t longer. It would be hard on us, but at the same time, if you truly love someone, you must let him or her chase their own dreams.

I had a phone call with another contact person at Apple, and they offered me a different, even more attractive position. The talk, late in the evening, was flattering and fun, as she explained how they thought I really was ‘Apple material’ and that they really enjoyed my work. In a comical moment of that chat, I was asked if I had done work for Apple before, as Orion, my freeware icon set, had been so prominently featured on Apple’s website. I laughingly responded that it was merely a very kind feature of the website maintainers. After the call, I was gleeful, and started compiling a portfolio PDF of my work for the review by the design group the position was for. A few days later, after sending off the PDF, the only thing that rested for me was waiting, and to continue pondering this dilemma.

In the end, little did I know that it wouldn’t matter a lot.

A week and a half or so later, I got a phone call from the representative again, saying that they’d had a meeting with the team and reviewed my work. The team, as they said, was very impressed, and really liked my work. Unfortunately, the visa situation made it impossible for me to start working there within a few months, and they absolutely required a designer for this position now.

It was a pity, but actually, in retrospect, not so much. I think that at that moment, Apple had me by surprise and shock. They’d even remarked positively on my work. If my mind’s roar had been a whisper before, now, my mind was screaming. I couldn’t know then that some of the best times for me were about to arrive, and although I’ve also had my lows after those talks with Apple, the good times have been a lot more rewarding. But what was most rewarding, and life-changing, was the shift of perspective.

I learned to listen to my mind and my gut at the same time, and while that may seem utterly trivial, it’s harder than you think if you’ve lived your life chasing after that seemingly forlorn dream, that long-winded road to ambition. I know it sounds stupid, but when I work with my dreams in mind, I tend to occasionally forget about those human traits like ‘hunger’, ‘thirst’, and ‘having an open ear for that story your partner is telling you’. It’s a constant balancing struggle, and an earth-shattering event (like the realization that on the track to your long-running ambitions, you’ve reached the end of the line) can tip the scales severely, forcing you to reconsider all those great things in life you previously took for granted.

Someone from the kindest of clients privately said to me over twitter afterwards;

“Sorry to hear about Apple. I know you were excited. No doubt it will happen eventually. In the meantime, their loss is our gain.”

Which cheered me up so much at that time, I still think it may be responsible at least partially for my great perspective shift where I don’t really care for a job at Apple anymore. I’ve lived a lot more appreciative of everything I cherish since this adventure, and living in even closer unity with my loved one. I had realized that I didn’t want Cocoia to die, regardless of what would happen. And that’s the moment where I realized if it will not die, it must grow. I started creating my ambitious plans to make into a reality. After all, if you don’t go to work at your dream job, why not create your dream company by yourself? Take matters into your own hands, so to speak.

Icon Resource was a thought, an ambitious plan of this time. It was into the end of the first week of February when I had formalized my plans for it and began my research. Now, almost two months later, it’s been unleashed, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I intend to learn a lot from this endeavor, and help others learn a lot along the way. And it’s not even the last grand project; I’ve several other things up my sleeve for April. But this was certainly one of the projects I consider a big step towards ‘Cocoia 2.0′ - a company independent of my sole success and availability, and a company that’s open to feedback and demands from its environment.

Talking about Icon Resource - I am very appreciative of everyone who helped support me in the first 36 hours with the purchase of access to the member area, and I’ll prove my continued openness to your feedback; over the weekend, bonus content will be added for all existing and future members - some of it based on feedback, and other content that was planned but didn’t make it for whatever reason. Of course, all of this will be announced to members when the time is right.

Icon Resource has even been requested on private torrent websites already, repeatedly showing up in those sections (or so I have been told and shown via email from an anonymous source). Who would have guessed that the pirates of the high webs now desire to indulge in visual interface design as well? Perhaps they’re just indiscriminate.

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.

Icon Resource contains 15 high-definition videos, separated into a theory and a technique section, explaining you everything you need to know to make your own icons with Photoshop. No prior knowledge of Photoshop is required.

If you purchase Icon Resource, you are granted access to a special member area featuring all videos in HD and iPhone formats, with the project files and documentation. The experience has been tuned to be as seamless as possible, as Icon Resource is now running on a separated, dedicated server, with an extra available high-bandwidth server for the large video files.

I want to thank everyone who’s helped out in this great endeavor; making such a beautiful and browser-friendly website was a unique experience, and working with the talented people who helped me turn a design into a great website was great fun. Of course, working on the videos provided to be a much larger task! I’ve spent about 6 weeks of fine-tuning my speech, minimizing my accent, and recording screencasts and audio.

Icon Resource wouldn’t be as beautiful and made with love if it weren’t for ScreenFlow, the best screen recording utility made since the dawn of man. Simon Clarke, one of the ScreenFlow developers, also helped me out with a minor issue I had during the composing of several recordings.

For now, sound off your thoughts and enjoy this great new jump into instructional videos!

Feel free to digg it if you want to see more of these kind of videos!