Rick Patrick Unveils Niqu
Rick Patrick is the artist behind Vanilla Soap, creating icons, desktops, and recently themes for fellow Macintosh users. Though he began graphic design only five years ago, fiddling with Fireworks for school websites and IT work, there’s no doubt that his recent creations are on the same ground as works by other older, more experienced artists, which is even more incredible considering Rick’s current addiction to Halo. It’s not hard to predict that the 19 year old Rick will soon become one of the best OS X themers to date, especially after soon upgrading his aging eMac to a more worthy iMac G5. Here to talk about GUI customization and his newest work, Niqu, is Rick Patrick.
MacThemes: Before LutetiumGUI, you were hardly known in the Macintosh GUI customization scene. Where were you for the last few years?
Most of my community-based releases before LutetiumGUI were wallpapers and, later, icons. The main theme of my wallpapers were abstract - either blurry or psychedelic, which was what I became “known” for in select communities such as Aqua-Soft.org, a site dedicated towards customizing Windows to look like a Mac. That was my main work for quite some time before I tried my hand at icons. I’d never really created complex icons (beyond my “flat” style ones) before May 2004. I often remark that my “Lamps” set was my first proper icon-set, and I think it’s true. I never anticipated I’d get into doing themes, but I’m pleasantly surprised that I have and that it seems to be a very fitting style of work for me.
MacThemes: So that explains how you went from desktops to icons. And what first got you interested into themeing?
I’m a very spontaneous person, as most of my friends will tell you probably, so I could be doing one task, get inspiration and then dive into another task. (For example; I was working on the Lutetium Metem icon-set when I got bored and did the intial LutetiumGUI mock up) As I said earlier, I never thought I would get into theming. It’s just that I had done a mock up, and decided to see if I could. I had never used ThemePark before that, so LutetiumGUI “broke me in” to theming.
Back in my Windows days, I did in fact try my hand at a few themes but none of them got off the ground. Although I know one main factor as to why I did start making mock ups that became themes: Max Rudberg’s templates. I swear they were heaven sent, and without them I’d of never got the courage to sit down and design an initial mock up. Kind of how training wheels let you get a feel for riding. The second factor would be friends, who usually guide me through what I should and should not do. Anyone who likes Lutetium (whether it be the icons or theme) deserves thanks, as I did not even intend to do a metal icon-set before they said it would look nicer! So when a few friends responded very well to the original LutetiumGUI mock up, I decided to try.
MacThemes: Some people think themeing is a frivolous hobby, and question the point of changing your computer’s interface. Yet there is a whole community dedicated towards this activity. What’s your stand?
I think people who create themes are, on the whole, under appreciated. It’s not really the community’s fault, but the general feeling from most people is “Yeah, this theme is nice. Now do a variant with such and such.” A lot of people don’t seem to realize that creating a theme is not just doing a mock up, cutting it up and throwing it together and shouting ‘Voilá!’ I think Niqu has easily over four hundred images (since I don’t use Photoshop, I export images in TIFF format and drop them into ThemePark), so far. Most people get bored, frustrated or exhausted by the long process of doing it all. The ratio of “Previews” and “Ann/Release” threads at places such as MacNN prove this to be at least partially true.
Now that I’ve made one, I have a lot more respect for other Theme Artists. I’m frankly amazed that some get time to just live and pump them out at the rate they do.
MacThemes: What about the stranger designs? It’s easy to argue that themes like Sweet Slumber and Somatic have a detrimental effect on productivity. Why do artists continue to create such themes, and why do users use them?
There are so many different types of people, especially those that use Macs, that there is an audience for every style. People who use their Macs for five, six, seven hours a day, in general, aren’t going to want a bright blue theme, or a shocking pink theme, or a voluptuous red, whereas someone who uses their Mac just for mail or web browsing probably would like a funky theme that’s fun. Of course that’s just my generalization. I know quite a few people who love bright “fun” themes and use their machines for long periods.
MacThemes: Your themes so far take the opposite direction of course. They are designed for professionals in mind. However, some people have complained about LutetiumGUI’s relative lack of contrast. Was Niqu designed to prove these critics wrong?
I’d love to say “Yes, take that!” but alas it wouldn’t be true. Niqu’s design was originally done during a period where I was “resting” from the eight hour sessions working on LutetiumGUI. So it’s spiritual basis was done weeks in advance of any real criticism about LuGUI. It’s interesting how it does seem to be a reply to that though; one good friend of mine who was the first tester of LuGUI commented, “Wow, you really pumped up the contrast!” when he first saw Niqu. I guess that’s the point with Niqu: It’s a good professional theme because it gets out of the way but it’s also an interesting theme because it has enough contrast to be usable by regular users. And that’s something that’s pretty rare.