MacThemes: Can you take us through the process when you design icons?

I start out by sitting back and thinking with some good music and maybe some tea, once I get a good storm brewing I start sketching stuff out in my sketchbook. From there I (or a client) narrow down the sketches to something usable. Then it’s off to Illustrator where I start rendering it out either on a grid or just loose shapes. The line art is reviewed and if all looks good I’ll start coloring and shading, working the image and adding detail as it goes along. It’s actually pretty similar to traditional painting. Once everything looks good in Illustrator, I hit my magic action button and it generates all the sizes for me and those go into the Photoshop grid file for Iconbuilder. After cleaning up the small sizes with the pencil tool it’s ready for loading into Iconbuilder to export out.

MacThemes: In your opinion, what is the hardest thing about icon design?

The hardest part is almost always the concept behind the icon. There are a lot of common ideas that many, many icons share so sometimes it can take a while before a bolt of inspiration hits and you have an original concept. Occasionally the rendering is more tricky, but with some trial and error the results will come. Icons are meant to be able to be identified quickly, especially for application icons, so the overall shape, feel, shadows and highlights should be unique as possible in order to differentiate it from the other icons around it.

MacThemes: If you were offered a choice of any job in the world, what would it be? Stay at the Iconfactory? Work in the ranks of Apple or Microsoft? Or move into a different field?

Well, ever since I saw Toy Story I’ve wanted to work for Pixar doing character design or something of that sort. Otherwise I’d be doing my own thing, just drawing, illustrating and designing stuff. I can’t really think of anything else I’d rather do.

MacThemes: You’re well-known among Mac circles for the web designs for My Dream App and MacThemes 2.0. What got you interested in web design?

It just came naturally into my workflow since I’ve been around computers. I’ve always had to design my own site and I learned loads from that, it’s been through untold revisions over the last 10-12 years since I had my first site in highschool. I still don’t consider it to be my strong point, but the designs seem to come around after a few rough initial rounds and concepts. A lot of the highly graphical site designs I’ve worked on aren’t too far off from regular illustration so that’s come in quite handy as well.

MacThemes: In your opinion, what are some of the most common mistakes in web design?

Over-thinking and trying to fit too much information into too little of a space are pretty common. You have to really think as a first time visitor to the site and see it from their perspective. You also have to have fairly good taste in design or be able to trust the designer to do their job.

MacThemes: What do you think of the designs for:

Apple

I really like the updated Apple site design, there are a few parts where it’s a bit crowded and busy, but overall they use the space really well. The graphics are all pleasant and it’s very easy to read the content and navigate throughout the site.

Microsoft

On first look at the Microsoft site, it just says ‘business’ and ‘corporate’ in all it’s design decisions. The color palette works well and the layout is a nice grid based one so everything is easy to read. The navigation is a bit convoluted though, there area two menus on opposite sides of the screen and two lists of navigation-like links in the middle. I’m not entirely sure which way to go.

Digg

The Digg home page is quite text heavy and busy with a lot of competing elements wanting your attention. Considering what Digg is though, it’d be incredibly hard to avoid lots of text. The individual posts are quite nice and clean though, making it easy to focus on the tasks within it.

Flickr

The Flickr site has a really nice layout with simple and intuitive navigation. The wonderful photos definitely add some personality to it and the site’s design does a good job keeping text and navigation subdued so the pictures can do the talking.

YouTube

There’s a lot going on in all of the pages on YouTubes site, I wouldn’t mind it being simplified a bit. The overall layout works well though and the only thing I really don’t like are the cheap gradients and highlights they use on the tabs and in the logo. It’d only take a few minutes of a designer’s time to make some slick and nicely rendered elements for the site.

MacThemes: Finally, what advice would you have for any aspiring illustrator and/or designer?

Mostly just practice as much as you possibly can without passing out or going into hiding. Besides that, take the best classes you can and learn traditional art and it will make your illustrations 100 times better.

Thanks to David for sitting down with us, and we wish him luck on his further projects!

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