As I alluded to earlier today, Sean Patrick O‘Brien and I are working on the very first Mac application that will be released under the Cocoia ‘brand’: Composition. Composition allows you to take any image and get a pixel-perfect preview of iPhone’s default effects at regular home screen size and Settings/Spotlight small icon size. It also lets you look at your icon in a virtual home screen to achieve a native look (and yes, both iPhone and iPod touch home screens will be represented), and export it for further usage on websites and other materials.

Composition is not an icon generator or designer in any way; it is made for people who care about the way their icons look, and want to get a break from the horrible workflow of mashing previews of icons together in Photoshop. There will be several easy-to-access Photoshop templates accessible from the app, but the actual design work is left to applications that are excellent at that kind of work. It will also be completely free!

I will announce more news about it as the application nears the beta milestone; in the mean time, drop an email to this address to get a spot on the list.

My 21st birthday is a few days away. Contrary to the previous years, where I posted on my birthday and occasionally reflected on the past, the way I live and work today is far more oriented towards what is yet to come, and as such I won’t do that again this year. 2008 was a great year for me, and 2009, so far, has not been any different. I won’t be posting about my birthday on April 29th; instead, I’ll be posting some new downloadable goodies on that date. For now, I want to look forward; there’s a pretty elaborate schedule ahead.

Apart from small and large clients that have booked my time, I’ll be in San Francisco in June for WWDC – with no conference ticket; I am really not doing so well that I can pay a whopping 1300 dollars for some days of networking with people, although I do intend to meet up with as many of you as I can – and the Fall season will involve one or more trips to Japan and possibly other asian countries. I also hope to show off some great work I have done in the last few months in May / June.

Regarding Asia, I am not sure why, but my Japanese (and Chinese) website traffic has been increasing tremendously (こんにちは!), and I have gotten a lot more Japanese clients as well. Perhaps my learning Japanese has something to do with it, although I haven’t talked about that a lot; Japanese culture fascinates me, and I am pleased with being able to get closer to it. I’ll probably be showing off some videos of my work for Japanese companies in the Fall of 2009.

And then there’s this blog. While my writing dwindled a bit under the stress of some extended projects, I will be finishing a lot of blog posts in the next weeks. I will preview the next version of Icon Resource (new course material is free for existing members), release a small new icon set, and talk about iPhone icons and the iPhone OS 3.0’s new color profile, which I have investigated. I will also publish an article about my own billing and accounting workflow complete with an interview with the guys that provide my top billing solution: Marketcircle, and, best of all, several nice software (and hardware) giveaways are coming up.

Due to this, I’m now also entering a partnership with the cool guys at Fusion. I have never considered advertising on my blog, but Fusion has a beautiful format and shows products I use and love as well. I think it’d also suit the blog and your sensibilities as a reader. Your input on this is of course welcome. I hope you enjoyed this peek at what’s in the pipeline!