The U.S. Memorial Day Holiday has put the workers behind a day or so on the assembly line, so be sure to tune in here tomorrow for the latest freeware release from IF artist, Talos Tsui. And while your patiently waiting, be sure to swing on over to MacThemes.net and read the in-depth interview with our own Dave Brasgalla. You’ll get to know what makes Dave tick and how he does some of those oh-so-cool things with icons. Check it out!
The Breakroom
New Freeware Icons Tomorrow
June 1, 2004
“Will You Pilot Eva?”
May 27, 2004
We’re proud to announce that this week’s freeware release is the latest in Mindy’s series of Neon Genesis Evangelion desktop pictures. This time out, our focus is the series’ own “hero” Shinji Ikari. Shinji is available in multiple screen resolutions and makes a great desktop for anime fans everywhere. Surf on over and grab it today.
Movin’ On Up!
May 21, 2004
For the second time in three years, The Iconfactory has outgrown its office space in Greensboro, NC. Its now been one year since Designer Anthony Piraino joined the factory, and the recent addition of Designer David Lanham pushed us over the occupancy limit. Since the workers are now packed in tighter than pickles (thanks Ellen!), we’ve made arrangements to move… two doors down to a new space. If all goes according to plan, we should be moving into the new office the week of July 6th. Stay tuned!
Saving The World One Desktop At A Time
May 20, 2004
Our resident comic book nut Talos Tsui has created an all-new desktop picture to accompany Gedeon’s recent icon release of Justice League. Now you can have the forces of good right there on your desktop as you battle evil deadlines and malicious kernel panics. Surf on over to scoop up this cool creation in a number of different desktop resolutions.
Once More To Middle Earth
May 18, 2004
Next Tuesday marks the DVD home release of “The Return Of The King”, the final installment in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings. Factory worker and long-time Tolkien reader Dave Brasgalla has taken his excitement about the event and put it to work, crafting a set of over 20 exciting new icons that follow the design aesthetic of the films.
The Lord Of The Rings: Armoury Of The Third Age began as a collection of swords, shields and other objects and heraldry associated with the various races of Middle Earth, but it soon evolved to encompass many other objects from Tolkien’s story. Richly detailed and painstakingly drawn, these miniature paintings will give you the chance to visit Middle Earth everyday – right on your desktop! This latest freeware collection is available now for the Mac, Windows and as a Pixadex iContainer. Lastly, don’t forget to grab the 5 matching desktop pictures available from Dave’s personal page, Pixelhuset.
Introducing Max Rudberg
May 14, 2004
We are very happy to announce that designer Max Rudberg has accepted and begun a 4 month intern position as a production assistant at the Iconfactory / Marmalade Moon studio in Stockholm, Sweden. Max is a graduate of Nacka Mediagymnasium. In his spare time Max enjoys creating themes for Mac OS X. You can view some of his work at his personal web site – MaxThemes. From all of the factory workers, welcome aboard Max!
Arm Yourself with DownloadCheck
May 13, 2004
Our Chief Typist, Craig Hockenberry has written a new freeware utility that checks for applications in your Downloads folder. It was created in response to the MP3Concept Trojan horse release of April 2004. See John Gruber’s excellent commentary on this Trojan and the controversy/hype that it generated. Although its highly unlikely Mac users will encounter a MP3 or other document type masquerading as an application, it is best to be prepared. DownloadCheck is released as a deterrent for anyone who might consider writing an exploit of this type. We hope that we’ll never need to use it. The utility is available today and is available free of charge.
A Long Overdue Apology
May 11, 2004
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. :-)
