It has been quite a while since our indescribably talented employee and good friend, David Lanham, left us to pursue certain success focusing on his unique and charming illustration talent. We were constantly amazed that he was able to endure our nonsense during his ten years with the Iconfactory. We’re also very grateful for the invaluable bits of knowledge, sometimes unorthodox techniques and humble charm he shared with all of us these many years.
We discovered David through Pixelpalooza, our long retired icon design contest. During our early years we also used Pixelpalooza to find one of our founding partners. Dave Brasgalla won in the Illustrative Category in 1998 and shortly thereafter joined Gedeon, Talos, and I. David entered in 2003 and won the Mac OS X category with his whimsical submission, Invading Your Space.
David’s contest entry was an early exhibition of his signature style and we were unanimously drawn to it. When the partners made the decision to hire a new designer, David’s name was at the top of our short list. He joined us in April of 2004, moved from Florida to Greensboro, and kicked off a decade of helping us put pixels in their proper places.
David quickly adapted his already formidable Photoshop and Illustrator techniques and became an extremely efficient designer, equally skilled at challenging app icon creation and high-volume toolbar icon production. David was responsible for some of the Iconfactory’s most memorable iconography and created so many amazing freeware icons & wallpapers during his time with us it’s hard to count them all. Here is a tiny fraction of his “Greatest Hits”.
This post is a much overdue tribute to a great friend and colleague. Thank you for sharing your time and seemingly limitless talent with us. From all of us here at the factory, we bid you a fond farewell and eagerly anticipate seeing what the next phase in your journey brings!
We leave you with one last example of David’s exceptional work. This video is a time-lapse. Watch as he deftly uses Photoshop to create some of the graphics from Pickin’ Time, our fast paced party game for all ages. We’ll miss you, David.
