Sofa’s, a new Icon Designer, and more.

You probably haven’t noticed, but it’s been the most huge blast of a day for me since, well, ever. Today was not just the release day of the new Icon Designer (which is still sliced, so sue me), but I also took the lengthy three-hour trip to Amsterdam to meet up with Jasper, Hugo, Dirk and Koen of MadebySofa. I also met the ex-Sofa intern, Jorn, who blogged a while about his experiences in the team. As a Dutch powerhouse of neat interfaces, icons and applications, MadebySofa has been inspiring for me so far, and today has only intensified my respect for the crew.

Here’s a photo shot by Dirk, kind enough to replace my frantic blurry photoboothing of the crew.

We discussed various things, had some great lunch and showed each other work. For me, it’s been the first time I ever met another icon designer, let alone Jasper Hauser, so it really was like coming home. I felt a bit sorry having to leave in the afternoon to make sure I could get a new battery for the Macbook Pro on the way home so I could get some work done, but the day was fantastic and more than worth the extraordinary traveling fees of the public transportation here. MadebySofa’s still Europe’s (the world’s?) only and best Mac team when it comes to interaction and interface design, and I feel honoured to work and talk with them. I spent an hour or so working on Icon Designer and sending emails to clients, as a part of the crew was out for a bit of the day celebrating Hugo’s birthday (happy one again, Hugo!).

So, enough for the great day I had in Amsterdam, on to the fresh meat. What do I have in store for you? Icon Designer has had layout, loading time, and graphic tweaks and changes, and now features two new icon sets for you to download freely. As space was getting scarce, I added a page containing all my freeware work so far, updated my client work with a few new icons I was allowed to show, and testimonials of very happy clients. I also added an about page, so you can read a bit more about me, and see how the process of icon design goes in general. I hope you like the additions and tweaks to Icon Designer and if you enjoy it, please drop a comment or an email; it makes me feel like making the freeware sets and the website is worth my time. Also check out MadebySofa, the greatest designers and developers out there in our low lands, and stay tuned for interesting developments down the road.

Update; added a picture shot by Dirk. Click it to read Sofa’s notes (and see who’s who).

Noble discount days begun, last pre-Lowlands 2007 post.

I’ll be out starting tomorrow and you can get Noble with 70% discount starting now. Grab it at the Icon Store if you need some icons. Do note that I won’t be able to email out the icon sets and licenses until I am back, but I’ll send them as soon as I get home.

Now for something to keep you sweet all the days that I am away; a little new preview of the folderset. Unorthodox nature motives! Check out the preliminary unpolished Aqua, Anodized and Wood variants;

Input very welcome! Now, I’ll see you all again August 20th - I’ll be sure to enjoy myself with the music, atmosphere and people.

944: The biggest release in the history of Icondesigner.

No, it’s not gone that far that I have pushed 944 icons so far. Perhaps I have, I don’t know, but that’s beside the point. What matters is the future. The time after 9:44 UTC.

Having gotten enthusiastic responses to the Iconizement plan I set forward in a few posts, I have been able to get ’sponsoring’ for at least two icon sets. I have a whole road ahead of me when it comes to the freeware icon sets I am producing.

This is, basically, the timeline for my upcoming icon sets. The three in the ‘hot zone’ above (the Designer Icons set 2, the War on Bad Design icons set 2 and the Designer Folders) are coming up very quickly, very possibly at the same time, when the brand new version of Icon Designer will be unveiled.

But there is more, a lot more. 944, the enigmatic number, stands for 512, 256, 128, 32, and 16; the new sizes that I will be releasing my icons in. You read that right, all new icon sets will feature super-hi res icons a month before Leopard. If anyone’s even been ready for Leopard, I am.

Apart from that, not only Mac users will rejoice. Icon Designer’s new releases come in all formats; for Windows in .ico, for Mac in ICNS, and for Linux users, PNG’s for all sizes. The growing popularity of this website has shown me that there is a righteous demand for these extra formats, and as such, you are getting them!

This wouldn’t be the Cocoia Blog if you would get out of this blog post without being peppered by desire-inducing preview images. The Designer Folders set, which will contain anodized metal, standard aqua and wooden folders with the following interesting motives;

Slight touches of reflection in the anodized steel folders (which are depicted here) are among the fine details in the new sets. The folder set is truly a showcase of new, unique ideas in folders and overflows with gimmicks and eye candy. Since there was a lot of ado going on at Macthemes over Susumu’s latest folder set release “Cats 2″ being ‘inspired’ by other sets, I set to inspire this set by cats as well. In fact, since they have always been so supportive in my life, I included a cat - he’s not so comfortable in folders, though, or so it seems.

I wanted to put a solid date on this release, and although it is highly dependent on my picky sense of perfectionism, I expect to launch Icon Designer v. 3 by the beginning of September - ideally, the last day of August. I will keep you up to date with the developments!

Noble Contest Winners.

‘Tis late, but it’s been quite a day.

Noble has gone on sale, finally, and this gorgeous 128-to -16 pixel sized icon set has quite a lot in (icon) store. As you can read on the website, various icons have been included for specific Leopard features, modern devices and in the tradition of Cocoia, requests will be honoured like the ones that will be announced with this conclusion of the contest that will give away four licenses of this great cornucopia of icons. The Noble Add-on set that will follow out of this will be free for the contest winners and all other license holders!

Contest Winner 1: Kyle Nilson

Nobody came close to Kyle’s excellent suggestion in terms of both originality and feasability;

(…)
One of the most under-catered fields in GUI is biology and the hard sciences in general. A great deal of developers homebrew apps to calculate annealing temperatures, enzyme digests, chemical compounds, and other technical mixes. In addition, one must often use small simple apps to program various tools to work properly, such as mixer tables, PCR machines, centrifuges, microscopy packages, and ultraviolet photoboxes.

Various icons are needed for DNA, RNA, timers, enzymes, temperatures (both metric and imperial), forces, compounds, master mixes, and many other thoughts, ideas, and processes in the scientific world. (…)

It sure did, Kyle!

Contest Winners 2, 3, and 4; ;

Nicholas Brawn suggested a console / terminal icon, a (network) activity icon, and something that represents logs or log viewing. An excellent suggestion.

Leif Singer had a fantastic list of suggestions like Operation.Success, Operation.warning, User.login / User.logout, Clipboard.copy and Clipboard.paste, Document.print, Sort.descending and ascending and Document.SaveAs. Fantastic all around.

Last but not least, Zac Cohan offered suggestions for website functions like Home, Support, Downloads, Help documentation, user login, and various navigational elements. Thanks for the tip, Zac!

I hope the winners enjoy their licenses a lot and starting now, you’ll be able to support my endeavour for freeware icons and ad-less websites by buying yourself a set - it’s a lifetime of use and great karma. Good night, everyone!

The contest has closed, Iconizement call for entries.

Ahh, the contest! The response was quite nice. I have discarded 13 submissions today because they really, really weren’t (wherever you live) within the deadline. A neat 142 submissions remain. I have, honestly, already sorted them and I think I have my winners. The website will be up August 7th, as will the blog post with the winning suggestions and I’ll be sure to send out the packs on that date as well. Thanks, everyone, for the numerous input and perhaps until another contest.

I talked about Iconizements in another post, they basically entail small targeted ‘advertising’ on freeware icons. You ‘donate’ a given amount of money as, say, “Company X”, and the next icon set would be (example!) “Company X Potato Icons”, featuring amongst things a potato grater with Company X’s logo embossed in it. Since I want to introduce people to it, I want a few developing companies / individuals willing to give it a try. In this case, your donation is voluntary and there will be some small icon sets featuring the specifications I outlined above. To summarize: Get a bit of free advertising! Yup, right here, on my icons. Why don’t you drop me an email?

And be sure to get rid of those nasty _()_ signs in my email address. ‘Tis to fight the bots.

Cocoia: the monetary future.

I have been meaning to make this post since a month now and I never did. It’s been sitting around in a drafts folder, with me making changes every few days but never large additions. Now I am committing myself to finishing it.

Cocoia has become my full time occupation. Although we know vacation months in the Netherlands, I can assure you I have none. Earning my living through the design that I do has been satisfying, exciting, dangerous, and fun, and it is truly bringing me to the place of my ambitions. What has been extremely satisfying is the response on the work I have done, ranging from gratitude because you’re feeling like a website is turning into a daycare when I crash the party with aircraft carriers, tanks and jet fighters or kind, encouraging, thoughtful and input-rich emails, blog posts, messages and comments. I celebrated my 150st blog post with the outpouring of my memories on the Flow icon design process, which Google crawled in minutes (!).

However, life as an independent (internet) design studio has its monetary uncertainties, and as my demands grow, my hardware grows insufficient, incapable of handling the tasks I throw at it. I work on a Core 1 Duo Macbook Pro, which isn’t very swift for the hard-core work. So let me be honest and cut to the chase; Cocoia, and thus, I, needs money.

No, I am not going to beg you for donations, I won’t throw you adsense stuff - this blog should remain full of free, quality, nag-free stuff. However, creative ideas that benefit you and me are good to explore. One of them is my new stock icon set; it’s comparatively priced very low (especially considering the high-resolution counterparts inside) and all future add-on packs are free for license holders.

But I have more ideas. Here is a rundown of what I am considering in the last summer months.

Iconizements are little advertisments on freeware icons. This may sound like a bizarre idea, but most icons I produce need a bit of stock layout or other visual material which I then make up myself. You could imagine the brand of the ‘Designer Icons’ TV icon being yours. Or something similar; an icon I could make in the future of a document can feature your content. It’s a total package that shows you on the download page as a sponsor of the icon set, and an oppurtunity for people feeling generous or just feeling like their public image can use a small boost. It’s not as far overboard as commissioning me for a whole icon set, but also not as cheap as donating a dollar. You can contact me for information about placing an iconizement in the future.

My applications are still being developed. Not being able to release them to make a living means I have to (not to worry, it is my great passion and craft) do design work on a freelance basis and give priority time to that. I do plan to release one of my applications around Leopard’s release - which one, I’d rather keep in the dark. Being overly optimistic about release dates is the least I can afford in my current situation.

Actual product advertisements are a thing I am considering as well, in the style of the Deck. If you look at the MacThemes frontpage, you can see what I mean by that. I might even offer complimentary ad design, so if there is interest for this let me know - These are all options I am considering, but there should be a reasonable degree of demand.

Naturally, I think all options are only interesting if they benefit you and me; a good living for me means the freedom to spend some time on freeware icons for you and other quality content. Let me know what you think, unabashedly, of my future plans in the comments or over email.

Noble is ready, I’m not - that means a contest!

While my goal was to release my first stock icon set, Noble, today, problems with setting up the payment services have once again foiled my plans. I will now have to wait five to seven days to put it up. However, I found a use for the time we have to wait. First of all, you can now take a look for yourself.

Here are the 32 and 16 pixel versions. If you want, you can go take a look at the 48 pixel versions, and the very nice 128 pixel versions! (Big image alert!). Now, on to the contest.

Four free licenses for Noble, worth €99,- can be won in the contest.

I want to see what developers, stock icon enthousiasts and general audience needs in a stock icon set. What is missing that you want to see included? Send me your top requests and motivation at this address (be sure to put an “@” in there, eh, ’tis against the spambots), and in five days I will pick the four people who have hit the nail on the head.

A license constitutes royalty free use for life, with future requested icons (add-on packs) sent to you for free!. Of course, the requests will be honoured in the future and posted on the blog for people to enjoy (and verify that I did, in fact, give people the packages ). What are you waiting for? Send me some suggestions!

Edit: All submissions must be in before August 4rth, 2007. Submissions sent after this date will not be considered. Winners will be notified before August 7th.

111 icons…

It was quite an effort, and I am still tweaking and testing, but I am pleased to show one big thing releasing the 30th. Check out the brand spanking new Icon Store for a preview of Noble, my upcoming stock icon set. Noble has been made specifically for resolution independence and the Leopard aesthetic.

Very soon!

The Spam Ends Today.

Okay, so if you want to comment on my blog now, you’ll have to help digitise old books. Yeah, really. I thought it was a nice cause and my general dissatisfaction of Captcha’s was overruled by this cute effort. Now, for the good cause, drop a comment ;).

Info: This means I am now using a captcha to combat blog comment spam (which got to over 2500 comments per day) and you have to type two words. That’s all there is to it, and it can be spoken aloud or refreshed. No worries!

New Cocoia.com launched!

The new Cocoia.com is up! I hope you enjoy a more consistent expirience across the Cocoia ‘brand’ sites and expect to see some good additions soon. We’re going into an exciting month.