The World of Dave Brasgalla
Dave Brasgalla is one of the most celebrated and popular Mac artists, known for his dozens of free icon sets at the Iconfactory, and desktops, fonts, and sound sets at his homepage, Pixelhuset. Today, he works at the Iconfactory and Marmalade Moon art studio with his fiancé Kate England in Stockholm, Sweden, creating commercial works for the Iconfactory as a career and freeware sets for the community on the side. In this Insider, we find out more about the World of Dave Brasgalla, and find out how he got started, the process involved in making one of his icons, and his thoughts on themes.
Joshua Jones is better known as MindFad in the Mac GUI community, a name he made for himself by creating an esoteric series of icon sets based on Nintendo video games, with a cartoonish style that was perfect for the job. Today, Josh continues his tradition with a twist - his newest set, based on the hit game Metroid: Prime, is his first to be rendered in 3D, and infused with the darker style that Retro Studios created so successfully in their critically acclaimed game. In this Insider interview, Josh talks to us about some of the techniques that a premier OS X icon designer uses daily, the advantages and pitfalls of going 3D, and his favorite Mac artists.
In 1984, Apple debuted the Macintosh: a personal computer that took a radical leap in the user experience, and brought it to the masses. And behind the computer was the team, which included a young programmer, Bruce Horn. Fresh from the groundbreaking labs at Xerox PARC, Bruce worked on the Finder, an application and concept that in some form or another, is universally used by computer users today. Now, soon after the Macintosh’s 20th anniversary, Dr. Horn joins us to revisit his experience as a collaborator in one of the greatest technological projects in history, discuss what he has done since then, and what he has planned for the future.
For those new to the Mac customization scene, William Bart is one of the more interesting and controversial characters whose work you’re likely to encounter. An accomplished commercial designer and illustrator by trade, his extensive BBX theme designs are widely considered to be some of the best non-commercial GUI work ever released. His attention to detail and overall sense of style are the kind of stuff that make enthusiast’s heads spin and critics foam at the mouth. In fact, you’re likely to see his influence in the work of many up-and-coming theme designers on both platforms, in commercial interfaces for everything from websites to video games and (as rumor has it) perhaps even within Aqua itself. Curved buttons, realistic glossy surfaces, translucency, directional lighting with drop shadows - all stuff William and others were doing with the OS9 utility Kaleidoscope long before Aqua was revealed.