Behind the Minds

A lot of talented minds go behind CandyBar, as well as the entire Panic and Iconfactory suite of products. To look at the work they put out to us is one important thing, but it’s equally important to take a look at the people themselves- their personalities influence the software we use on a regular basis. Austin Heller and Luis Sosa got a chance to sit down, virtually, with Cabel Sasser and Gedeon Maheux to talk about their respective companies and plans for the future.

MacThemes: So Ged, let’s talk a little about the Iconfactory. How was the Iconfactory founded?

Ged: The Iconfactory was started back in April of 1996 as a hobby between our three founding members: Corey Marion, Talos Tsui and myself. At the time, all three of us were working for a small multi-media company called Paradigm Interactive designing educational CD-ROMs for children. Icon making was part of the job description, and each us started pushing pixels on our own time for fun.

Corey, Talos and I all had individual web pages where people could download our icons, but it wasn’t until Corey came up with the idea to create a single page where the three of us could consolidate our work and thereby increase hits that the first version of the factory was born. Corey came up with the name “Iconfactory” as well as the first icon of the factory itself. The original site (a single web page) was created and hosted on AOL. Today, the Iconfactory has grown to 9 people and has offices both in the US and Sweden.

MacThemes: What was your vision for the Iconfactory when you were starting out? How is that different than it is today?

Ged: Starting out it was definitely to get established and keep a roof over our collective heads. We weren’t sure if we could make a living pushing pixels in the shapes of tiny (then only 32×32 pictures). It was all a grand experiment, but we were blessed with important opportunities and dedicated artists that helped get us to where we are today. Today the business is thriving and we not only have our client work, but other fun side projects that keep the job interesting. We have a talented engineer in Craig Hockenberry that has helped us add software to our resume and have formed relationships with other developers like ARTIS Software and Panic that have just a strong desire to create cool stuff as we do. We’re truly blessed.

MacThemes: At what point in your life did you make the decision to transform the Iconfactory into your full-time career?

Ged: After being laid off twice by companies that thought they wanted to get out of the technology sector, I and the other guys as the Iconfactory made the conscious decision to become our own bosses. We had already done icon work for Microsoft’s Outlook Express for the Mac, and made the decision to try it full time. I think this turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made. I’ve enjoyed every minute of our careers together.

MacThemes: Okay, Cabel. You founded Panic with Steven Frank in 1997; was this your first dive into Mac software development?

Cabel: Indeed. The Mac was, at the time, failing miserably and packed with nutty Amelio goodness. I’d like to say we knew the Mac would turn around and become was it is today and that it was all written into our business plan. I’d be fully lying, and also lying about having a business plan.

All that’s changed between 1997 and then is that we have additional super smart people doing super smart code and answering e-mails and it’s all totally awesome. (Somehow, inexplicably, I’m still the only guy doing the design, which is very clearly not going to scale much longer. I’m working on it!)

MacThemes: There are a lot of things Panic does that are special- the design and tone of your website, your marketing, and obviously excellent UI design. As far as I know, you do quite the design work, but do you serve other roles in addition to artist?

Cabel: As well as designing, I’m often the “business end” of Panic. (Which sounds just wonderful.) I do a lot of project management-y things, I pay the bills, I’m actually our system administrator (and just finished moving our Xserves to a new colocation facility!), right now I’m answering the CandyBar e-mails, I did the bulk of the PHP programming for the website, and I literally take the trash out and vacuum the floors. It’s clear I need to learn to delegate a little bit better.

MacThemes: You have a long relationship with the Iconfactory, who have done icons for Desktastic, Transmit, and Coda. Who approached who about the idea for CandyBar (and Pixadex, for that matter)?

Cabel: The Iconfactory definitely came to us. They had a previous product back in the Mac OS 9 days that did something similar to CandyBar, and they wanted to update it for Mac OS X. We pitched the idea of doing in the least-hacky way possible, by simply replacing the icon files on disk. The original product, which was all Steve, came together pretty quickly. And, interestingly, CandyBar 3, which was all Wade (with a little bit of Steve), also came together pretty quickly!

MacThemes: I must ask: how much customization do you do personally?

Cabel: Ironically, not a lot — but I will always install the latest killer system sets from Iconfactory and elsewhere to take them for a test drive, and I am using a nicer looking custom dock these days.

Unlike a lot of people, I’m generally pretty happy with what Apple gives me. But I’m very happy to provide the choice if someone else isn’t!

MacThemes: One last question: it’s hard to imagine where you go with CandyBar from here. It really does seem like it’s finally fulfilled what Candybar and Pixadex promised to do from day one, that is to make icon customization easy, fun, and beautiful. Any ideas on what comes next for CandyBar, both in upcoming 3.X releases, as well as the more distant future?

Ged: Don’t want to say too much, but there is always room for improvement. I can think of more than a few other GUI things in Mac OS X that could use some CandyBar lovin’. We’ll have to see where the road takes us though, so far the trip has been fun!

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Obviously, this piece couldn’t have been published without the help of Cabel and Ged; a big thanks to them for their contributions, and letting us get an insight on their lives as Mac developers. Thanks for reading!

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