Rockstar Icon Designer - Kate McInnes [58]
KM If someone reading this interview wants to join the Tango icon design community, how would they go about it?
JS Follow the guidelines, use the style! If you don't have a pet project that needs a facelift, drop by at #tango on irc.freenode.net or #gnome-design on irc.gimp.org and we'll figure something out.
Title: Face-devilish
Description: Emoticon for a base theme. Inkscape
Benjamin Nathan
Benjamin Nathan is a young aspiring designer with a passion for icon and user interface design. With some great looking icons already in his portfolio, Benjamin hopes to continue creating icons in the future.
KM How did you first get started in icon design and what drives your work now?
BN I believe I found out about icon design whilst looking for ways to customize my desktop. Upon searching for icons and wallpapers I stumbled upon a couple of Mac-oriented customization websites where people also made their own icons. I loved everything that had anything to do with customization, with icon design and with graphic design in general. From there on I joined these forums and websites and slowly started to try and make my own.
KM Are you self-taught or did you attend a class or school?
BN I'm completely self-taught. I think if one wants to learn icon design the most important thing is that you have to enjoy it. If you truly love what you do, it never feels like working. I never felt that I was teaching myself something because I genuinely wanted to find out how I could do certain things, and over time you just know your program.
KM Do you work freelance, in-house or are you part of a team?
BN Right now all my work is conducted through the internet. I have recently set up my website and my first clients are rolling in now.
KM Do you work exclusively in Icon Design or do you work in different fields?
BN I'd say I mainly do icon design but also love to work on web design and UI design. I'm also trying to teach myself HTML5 and CSS3.
KM What's the main style of your icon work and what process do you follow to create an icon from start to finish?
BN I'd say my style is semi-realistic when it comes to icon design. I prefer making Application icons and these tend to be kind of semi-realistic.
I usually just start with a pen and a piece of paper. I sketch out all of my ideas and see what works best. When I think I have the right one, depending on the icon, I usually do a case study on the material. Say I have to make a wine bottle icon, I would go on Google and whatnot and collect a lot of examples of wine bottles, just to see how the glass forms and how I would go about making such an effect in Photoshop for example, just as reference images. When that process if finished, I go into Photoshop and start the actual icon.
KM Do you have a source of inspiration? If so, how has it contributed to your style?
BN I try to surround myself with a lot of excellent design work and design blogs. I think we can learn a lot from each other and for me personally it really helps to know what the best icon designers out there are putting out and how they go about making something. But besides that it's also because I really enjoy visiting such websites. One I really like is Dribbble (http://dribbble.com) where designers from all around the world can showcase what they're working on.
Clover Icon
This 'Clover Icon' was done for training purposes, just for the experience. I really enjoyed creating an icon that was quite different than the usual icons I create.
KM What's the most difficult icon you've ever had to create and why?
BN I would say drawing a cog wheel was one of the hardest things I've ever created, at least at the time I thought it was rather difficult. It's a very complex shape, and if you want to have it correctly positioned and have it be scalable you have to work a lot of magic with your shapes.
Looking in my application folder, I noticed that compared to the other lovely application icons, the calculator one looked rather dull. I set out to create