I am delighted to announce that my article about creating 512x512 icons for Mac OS X Leopard has been published at Smashing Magazine!

Smashing Magazine delivers useful, inspirational and innovative information for designers and web-developers and it's a great pleasure for me to contribute to such a creative designer environment!

“In 2000 Apple released the visual theme Aqua, a stunning leap forward in graphical user interface design. At the same time Apple published the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), a tool for developers and designers that gives a detailed breakdown of the design philosophy behind Aqua. Apple recently updated their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), to include the way the visual theme Aqua has evolved in Apple's latest operating system, OS X 10.5 Leopard. This is the first update since 2006.”

Aqua: "Gorgeous, artistic icons are an important part of the Mac OS X user experience. Users expect beautiful icons that tell an application’s story in a clear and memorable way". Well, how do icon designers go about creating beautiful icons in 512x512 glory? Leopard and the Updated HIG: A Designer's Guide to Icons examines Aqua's interface. Realism, symbols, silhouettes, transparency, light source and perspective. We take a look at the Dock, Leopard's file browser Cover Flow and the icon sizes. Finally you will find some practical tips on how to scale your art work so that the smaller versions become crisp and clear.

Tags: Apple, Mac OS X, Leopard, interface, design, usability, gui, guide, tutorial, realism

I am glad to announce that I have opened a shop here at Marmalade Moon!

I have designed a collection of brand new cards with seasonal motifs! You will find tulips, forget-me-nots and lilacs bursting out in time for spring as well as roses for when summer grows ripe. Colourful maple leaves for the autumn. Crisp snowflakes and orientally inspired pine tree patterns for chilly winter's days. Handy for birthday greetings, thank you notes, holiday greetings or just to let a friend know that you are thinking of them.

This is all part of my celebration of Marmalade Moon's 10th anniversary!

Tags: design, stationery, celebration, seasonal, floral

I am so excited that xScope 2.0 is being released!

This handy tool really is a “Swiss Army knife” for designers and developers. xScope is a powerful set of tools to measure, compare, and contrast literally anything on the screen. xScope will increase your productivity and free you from mundane tasks like measuring on screen elements.

Version 2.0 introduces Dimensions. This tool is like laser tape measure for the screen that projects a beam out from your cursor instantly finding the edges of images, margins and blocks of text. The days of taking screen shots, opening them and measuring them by hand are finally over!

xScope will change the way you work and take all the effort out of measuring onscreen elements.

An Iconfactory and ARTIS Software production.

Tags: design, gui, interface, productivity, software