28 Dec
   Filed Under: Announcement, Personal Work   

After over one and a half years, the sheer repugnancy of Icon Designer, my portfolio website, and my blog started to embarass me to such an extent that I was forced to design something I could live with. It also gave me a much-needed reason to do some real modifications to the blog to lower the posting threshold for myself. Check out the new websites, the cool new icons and client work, and read on, as I will need your help, and tell you a bit more about the new designs.

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31 Jul
   Filed Under: Announcement, Apple, News, Personal   

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!

13 Jun
   Filed Under: Announcement, News   

Because there’s life in the blog yet!

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.

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28 Apr
   Filed Under: Announcement   

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I turned 20 today, decisively terminating my teenager-hood. I can’t say it’ll bother me a lot, but I’m certainly curious in what the future will hold for me. The first 20 years of my life so far have been pretty great; I’ve left education, started my own company and started making a living off it, I’ve been invited by great companies to come work for them (including Apple), and I’ve met the girl of my dreams, started living independently, and reached hundreds of thousands of people through my icon work. I can only hope that the next 20 years will be as good!

If you want to comment on my birthday or drop a euro via paypal for a slice of pie, feel free to hit up sebastiaan ( -at- ) cocoia.com! :)

04 Apr
   Filed Under: Announcement, Apple, Commercial Work, Design, Personal   

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.

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02 Apr

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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.

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