The Breakroom

Way back in Iconfactory ancient history, say around 1998, the workers re-designed the site with what has become known as our “black phase”. That is to say that the predominant color of the pages of the site was black with white type. We received quite a few emails from people saying things like “Your site design hurts my eyes!” or “I HATE white type on black backgrounds”, to which, we, in our self-assured confidence simply brushed off as the ramblings of a few people with poor eyesight or little design sense.

We’ll, we’re here to tell you that everyone who wrote to us back then was right. The site was poorly designed and we were inconsiderate for not listening to your feedback. Why the change of heart you say? Six years has an effect on one’s vision, and while we don’t consider our mid-30s to be “old” per se, we have the same complaints about current websites that use black backgrounds and light type. Some of our favorite sites (development, entertainment news, etc) use this design and its like a horse race for us to surf over, read the content and get the hell out before our eyes burst out of our heads. So take it from a bunch of designers who have learned their lesson… webmasters please lighten up your pages. Believe us, you’ll be seeing it our way in 6 or 7 years. :-)

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we are currently experiencing technical difficulties with our backend database and as a result you are experiencing errors when attempting to access certain portions of the factory. Rest assured, we are working on the problem and hope to have the site back up and running shortly. Thanks for your patience.

Updated 5pm e.s.t – It appears that our hosting company, Data Return is having difficulty in locating and correcting the faults that are causing the database errors across the site. Although the factory was up for a short time this afternoon, it is down once again and we cannot guarantee navigation / searching / purchasing through the site at this time. We will do everything we can to get The Iconfactory functioning again, but in the meantime we apologize for any inconvenience you may be experiencing.

That’s right, another year’s icon design contest has reached its conclusion and with it, we are pleased to announce the Grand Prize, Runner-Up and People’s Choice winners of Pixelpalooza 2004. Our thanks go out to all of those who took the time to enter, as well as our generous sponsors who donated this year’s prize packages. Of those seen here, the judges selected 6 winners, and you the public chose the remaining three for People’s Choice. Together they represent the best in artistic achievement and originality for this year’s contest. Without further ado, here are your 2004 winners:

Mac OS X Grand Prize
Moccu Icons by Yenz – Berlin, Germany

Mac OS X Runner Up
Arthropoda by Max Fiedler – D

We’ve put our weekly freeware releases on hold so that the icon spotlights will be highly focused on tomorrow’s contest winners. Be sure to tune in here tomorrow at 12 Noon, e.s.t. to learn the official Grand Prize, Runner-Up and People’s Choice winners in each of the three contest categories. You can almost hear the drum roll starting now… stay tuned!

Public voting has ended for Pixelpalooza People’s Choice 2004. As we begin to tally the ballots we would like to thank everyone for supporting your favorite entries this year. Please join us on April 21 when we announce all of the final winners. Good luck to everyone!