by Justas | Mar 14, 2017 | Interviews
Today I’m extremely happy to be bringing you an interview with another great icon designer — Andrei Stefan. We’re collaborating together to bring you the in-depth course on creating pixel-perfect icons. This topic is without a doubt one of my most requested, so it definitely deserves a comprehensive course that will help you take your icon design skills to the whole other level. It will cover everything you need to know to create stunning pixel-perfect icons and illustrations. But more on that in the nearest future. Andrei is one of those rare people that have come to realize that life is too short to spend it chasing corporate dream jobs. Instead, he chose a path that has led him to something entirely different. With the background in social sciences but a keen interest in everything that revolves around visual art, he soon realized that he could get the best of both worlds. This gave him a unique opportunity to do something both meaningful and enjoyable. So Andrei has been dabbling with pixels for about 4 years until he fell deeply in love with icon design and illustration. You can find him on Dribbble, Twitter and here: http://www.andrewrosek.com/ A lot more can be said about this great icon designer, but without further ado, let’s jump straight into the interview! Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where do you come from? Hi, I’m Andrew, and I’m freelance illustrator / icon designer born and raised in Romania with a strong fondness for coffee. How did you get started with icon design? Well, that’s kind of...
by Justas | Feb 21, 2017 | Interviews
Hey! Today I’m extremely happy to be bringing to you an interview with another great icon designer – Budi Tanrim. He is a deep-thinking digital multidisciplinary designer who believes in simplicity and user-oriented approach. You can find him on Dribbble, Twitter and here: http://buditanrim.co/ Apart from being an incredibly skilled product designer and illustrator, Budi have rocked the icon design world with the amazing icon set for Yahoo, and his own premium icon set Budicon! A lot more can be said about this great human being and fantastic icon designer, but without further ado, let’s jump straight into the interview! Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where did you come from? Hey, my name is Budi Harto Tanrim. I consider myself as a multidisciplinary designer and currently live in Surabaya, Indonesia. Fun fact: I never went to any formal design education, I graduated as an accountant from my University. I started my design career by entering a lot of design contests on 99 Designs. You’re a really talented Multidisciplinary Designer. How did you get started with icon design? Back in 2012, I was in my early career and taught myself how to do Mobile App Design. I was pretty much struggling to find any good icon and begin to see it as an opportunity. While I have no idea how to design an icon, I started to learn from pieces of freebie and tutorial here and there. Without realizing it, I have started to create a few icons for any web and app projects myself. Since I’m a big fan of...
by Justas | Aug 16, 2016 | Interviews
Funny story: not so long ago, the guys from the IconJar app reached out to me asking for an interview. The funny part is that they contacted me on the exact same day I wrote a note for myself to do an interview with them in the future! What a crazy coincidence! So here we are. A two-way interview, so to speak. For those who are wondering what IconJar is: it is an app that allows you to organize, search and use icons the easiest way. A great thing for anyone working with tons of icons and who are looking for a way to manage them all. Not only does it let you tag, arrange and search your icons more easily, but it also allows you to drag and drop icons into your favourite graphic design software. Check it out, it’s awesome! But let’s jump straight into the interview! Iconjar is an amazing product! Could you please present it to people who aren’t yet familiar with it? How does it make life easier for fellow designers? Hey Justas, thanks for the kind words! We really appreciate it that you like our app. Iconjar gives people the ability to store all your icons in one place. I came up with the idea for an icon catalogue when I was still using a Windows computer and had thousands of icons on my Dropbox. Finding the perfect icon took way too much time due to the way Windows Explorer works. After switching to a Mac I noticed that I struggled with the same problem. I found out that I wasn’t the only...
by Justas | May 10, 2016 | Interviews
Hey! Hope you’re doing well! I’m extremely happy to publish my second interview on Icon Utopia! Today we are talking with Scott Lewis – head of content at Iconfinder. You can find him on: Iconfinder Dribbble Twitter http://iconify.it/ Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where did you come from? My name is Scott Lewis and I live in Richmond, Virginia (for now) in the United States. I am 46 years old and have lived in Richmond for the past 22 years. What is your story, how did you get started with icon design? I started drawing and making creative things when I was a very young child. Fairly early on my parents noticed that I had talent for drawing and they encouraged me in this. I started taking art lessons when I was 15 years old and eventually studied art and design at university (East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina). The very first icons I designed were as part of a design class project in which we were asked to represent common objects using only 3 different line weights. I chose brass musical instruments. My first attempts were pretty bad but not being content to not be good at something, I kept practicing and eventually fell in love with designing small glyphs and logos. After I finished university, I worked as an Art Director for different ad agencies and design firms for 8 years but wasn’t really happy doing creative work where I had to compromise my creativity to comply with clients’ whims. So starting in 1998 I taught myself computer programming...
by Justas | Apr 26, 2016 | Interviews
Hey! Today I got something special prepared for you! About a week ago I came across an incredible project ICONSPEAK — t-shirts designed to ease the communication with locals wherever you go. It comes in handy when you are in a foreign country with no knowledge of the local language whatsoever. After all, icons are a global visual language! I wish I found out about these t-shirts before my Thailand trip! There were times when talking to the locals was beyond difficult if possible at all. I’m sure many of you saw articles about the ICONSPEAK tees in your news feeds. Maybe you even thought, “Damn, why haven’t I come up with this idea?!” I know I did! Anyway, the traveler’s t-shirt went viral with the speed of light, but what do we know about people that made this brilliant concept a reality? I felt obliged to right this injustice and talk to the masterminds that invented a t-shirt that has a potential to change traveling experience for everybody. So without further ado, lets jump straight to the interview: As far as I know, you are a team of three, right? I would love to hear a little bit about each of you: could you briefly introduce yourselves? What are your backgrounds? How did you meet each other? You are correct Justas, we ware just the two of us on the trip, Florian and me (Georg). We travelled together through Asia and the Motorbike trip through Vietnam was an essential part of it. Before that – 2009-2012 we were study mates at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. Steven is a very...
