David Lanham is one of the most popular Mac designers today, best known for his icons and illustrations on his website, his two themes Amora and Somatic, and the designs for sites My Dream App and MacThemes 2.0 (along with Renato Valdés Olmos). He currently works at the Iconfactory, creating freeware icons as well as commercial designs for clients like MacPractice, Sybase and Microsoft Xbox 360. Austin Heller and Sam Gwilym of MacThemes sat down with David to get a closer look at his life as a designer, his thoughts on desktops, and his opinions on Aqua and other themes.

MacThemes: So let’s start with the basics- tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get into graphic design? What style of art did you begin with? How old were you when you started getting into drawing?

Oh, I started drawing before I can even remember, I have some really strange drawings in these 3 ring binders from growing up. It’s mostly massive stick figure battles and scenes, they’re quite fun to look at occasionally. I started official art training when I was growing up with lessons from my aunt in a number of medium and then acrylics in lessons after school when I was in highschool. Once in college I took many traditional art classes and some graphic design ones as well. I found that graphic design was a nice mix between using computers and artistic creation, but I’ve never given up the traditional base for my computer work.

MacThemes: You’re probably best known for your icon work, but you have quite a repertoire of digital and analog illustrations, as well as two of my favorite themes, Amora and Somatic. What style of art are you most interested in, if any?

By far, the most fun is drawing by hand, pretty much everything I do starts out that way and it’s really just the finishing medium that varies. I’ve really enjoyed getting back into some painting recently though, I’m playing around with gouache and acrylics mostly. Who knows what medium I’ll eventually settle on, but I always love to try out new ones. No matter what though I can always see myself doing icons, it’s just too much fun to be able to customize various apps and system objects.

MacThemes: What are your tools of the trade? Do you work on screen in Photoshop and Illustrator, or start from paper?

After I sketch something out a few times and narrow it down to something I like, I either scan it in or start with the pen/brush tool in Illustrator. I start with the linework there and then bring in color and finally shading. In Photoshop and Illustrator (well, pretty much all other apps too) I use my wacom tablet, I think that my mouse is starting to feel neglected.

MacThemes: When you draw, does a clear image of what you want come to you instantly, or do you develop an idea as you work with it?

Occasionally I’ll have clear ideas of what I’m working towards or a starting point, but all throughout the process it’s more like improvisation. I’ll start with some basic shapes and let imagination guide my hand; drawing upon thoughts, whims and my memory for inspiration.

MacThemes: You graciously release your artwork for free; what inspires you to continue releasing such creative, beautiful icons and illustrations?

Probably because there would be a complete rebellion if I charged for icons and desktops! Mostly I just enjoy all the wonderful email of people saying how I’ve brightened up their desktop and their day with something I’ve created. It’s really just mind blowing.

MacThemes: So let’s talk about desktops. Now desktops of course play a bit of a role in the world of customization, but might sometimes be overlooked a bit. Now, a lot of people start making desktops mixing simple shapes and colors and slapping them all together – but you do something very different with illustrated pieces. Did you start off making desktops as desktops, or did it just stem off of you making illustrations anyway?

They nearly came about at the same time, I began the illustrations as only characters by themselves based on drawings I had created. As I used the illustrations for icons, I started to want my desktop to match so I started to make scenes of the similar style for desktop pictures. These then spiraled off into full artworks, some of which no longer work very well for desktops since they are too busy.

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