For our first new Insider, MacThemes sat down with Michael Gonzalez, Edward Scherf, Philipp Antoni, Jonas Rask, and Joshua Pyles of the relatively new design group, Enhanced Labs. Founded in 2002, Enhanced Labs has been rapidly accumulating an impressive portfolio, talented designers, and words of praise from happy customers. Phill Ryu and Johnny Komisar of MacThemes sat down with the staff over at Enhanced Labs to discuss their company, their success in the design world, and all things GUI.

When I heard that you guys had started Enhanced Labs, the first thing that came to mind was… "Hey, these guys are creating a new IconFactory". The IconFactory guys have been around for ages and have done extensive icon work for clients like Microsoft (Designing the entire XP icon set no less) - do you guys look to them for inspiration?

Michael Gonzalez: I would say yes, the IconFactory has been a source of inspiration. They were one of the few quality design groups whose main focus was icon design. One of the things that fuelled our startup was the urge to design new, fun, and creative graphics for more than just one platform. Yellow icon was also another source of inspiration for me. IconFactory, in combination with yellow icon helped form our unique style and attention to detail that you may find in our graphic work.

Edward Scherf: Indeed, I do turn to the IconFactory for inspiration once and a while. There is no denying the talents of David Lanham and Dave Brasgalla, however the IconFactory isn’t the only place to find great talent. The internet is chocked-full of great designers - all bringing their own cultural flavor, unique approach to design, and their one of a kind style to the table. The staff at Enhanced Labs is no different. Our diverse group of designers from around the world combine together for a great style. This is something many companies can’t offer.

Philipp Antoni: Well, when I started designing for Enhanced Labs I was mostly creating web sites and the first bigger icon jobs consisted of rather weird and special icons, so I’d say I grew into the "icon business" without much inspiration. If I ever look for inspiration nowadays it’s mainly to see how they realized some special effect or other minor things. I wouldn’t deny that some especially beautiful icons get stuck in my mind though, and I’ve surely got some from the IconFactory there.

So just out of curiosity, as developers have started to give some more attention (and money) to quality icon design, there have been a lot of independent icon designers popping up. Why did you guys decide to operate Enhanced Labs as a group?

Michael Gonzalez: In the early days of Enhanced Labs, Philipp Antoni and myself used to work on a lot of freeware projects for an aqua based community called “aqua-soft.org�. During that time of partnership we came up with what some of you may be familiar with as ‘LHA GUI Kit’ aka “Longhorn Alternative�, and Longhorn Pinstripe just to name a few. It was great; We got along really well and created quality work for fun. As Enhanced Labs became more popular, so did the feedback from the community. More and more people started requesting commercial design work. So, I figured, lets give it a shot. After doing some brainstorming I opened a commercial icon design portion at Enhanced Labs, and decided to work as an independent designer under the name “Enhanced Labs�. Later, as the demand increased, I realized it was way too much for just one designer to handle, and slowly I started asking some of my design friends (from the community) if they were interested in designing commercial icons. And from there, our team has grown into what it is today.

Josh Pyles: Mike and I started making graphics for forums. As friends, we both out started independently making icon sets for free and for applications in the community (namely aqua-soft.org). After a while we developed our own groups. Mike had Enhanced Labs (associated with Philipp Antoni), and I was with some guys called nextgenMS (back when Microsoft was still kinda cool). We prided ourselves on making cool forum signatures and wallpapers to coincide with different themes. As our hobbies started to transform more into more of a business model, Mike continued with the same name Enhanced Labs; and I started my own little venture called Josh Pyles Graphic Design. With that, I designed a number of free icon sets and did some freelance work with clients. After a while, however, I started to not have enough time to continue to run my business, so I closed up shop for a while. When my availability cleared again, I decided to join Mike at Enhanced Labs rather than run my own business again. Mike and I have since recruited several other designers for our team, and we all enjoy (nearly) every minute of it.

Philipp Antoni: One great aspect of working in a group is that you can ask the others for critique or help, and some jobs have been split among multiple team members already. And there’s still the advantage that Enhanced Labs can accept a lot more projects, which helps with spreading the word.

Edward Scherf: It’s great to see developers putting the time and effort into making their applications as eye pleasing as they are useful, especially being that these two elements of creating a killer application go hand-in-hand.

It’s also good to see newcomers to the market emerging. Competition only makes us push ourselves harder, which in turn boosts our caliber of work.

It’s hard to find a design team as diverse and as talented as the Enhanced Labs design team. We have great talent from all around the world, with each designer throwing their own cultural background and experiences into the mix. As a team, there isn’t much we haven’t seen and/or done, which really helps us to relate to our clients needs - no matter what their project, big or small. Additionally, working as a group not only allows us to look to each other for guidance, but allows us to either work on more than one project at a time, or put more than one designer on a single project, which in turn boosts productivity.