As a part of the MacStories Apps Tree event, I had the chance to interview David Lanham, an icon designer working at the Iconfactory. You can check out some of his awesome works over at his website.

Enjoy!

Hi there! Can you please introduce yourself to MacStories readers?

Hey, Thanks for the interview! I’m David Lanham, an icon designer at the Iconfactory and I also do a lot of drawing and painting in my spare time.

How did you interest in design - especially icon design - get started?

I’ve been drawing ever since I was a kid and it’s been a natural progression as I’ve studied art and design in school. My interest in icon design started after I got my first Mac and began learning about customizing folders and application icons. One year I entered the Pixelpalooza icon design contest held by the Iconfactory and won first place in one of the categories. The year after that I was offered a job with the Iconfactory and I’ve been a professional icon artist ever since!

“I’ve always had a fascination with the contrasts of nature and technology.” That’s what you say on your website. Can you please explain this further? Did you have this fascination even when you were a kid?

My interest in the relations between nature and technology have been around for a while, probably from a mix of lots of outdoor activities growing up and also being around computers as they’ve continually advanced throughout the last few decades. They share a lot of overlapping aspects, but they’re also very different in how they feel to experience. This is a really broad generalization, but typically, computers and other man-made items have limits that they can be pushed and although we’re constantly expanding those limits, they always pale in comparison to everyday occurrences in nature. It goes a lot further than that, but it’s way too large to cover here. Just one of the things I think about though, mostly brought about by nature always having something new to discover.

What would be a typical process for you when starting out a new design project?

After doing some initial research and idea brainstorming, I nearly always start off with sketches and then do basic line art followed by colors and shading. It’s pretty standard, I think.

Where do you find inspiration?

The majority of the time I get inspiration just from doing some freehand doodling in my sketchbook; drawing shapes or forms and seeing what comes out of them. It’s kind of like seeing shapes in clouds or ceiling stucco. There’s probably some subconscious things going on too, but I’d be more worried about myself if that’s always the case.

Has Mac OS changed the way you design / work?

I haven’t done a lot of production work on non-Mac computers so it’d be difficult to say, but I can say that as Mac OS has evolved it’s become increasingly more pleasing to design for. I think one of my favorite recent advancements is the Quick Look functionality, it’s made browsing source files and documents so much quicker.

Which apps do you use most to create your works?

Most of my software time is spent in Adobe Illustrator with Photoshop running a close second. All the icons I create with the Iconbuilder plugin and then organized using Candybar.

Do you have a “favourite” icon among the ones you’ve designed?

I think my favorite icon so far has been the leaf icon for Panic’s application Coda.

Can you please describe us your workstation?

I’m on a Mac Pro dual core at home and 8-core at work, both with 4GB of RAM. For design and icon illustration I use a 6”x8” Wacom Intuos tablet and two monitors: a 20” and a 30”.

What would you like to receive for Christmas this year?

I’m upgrading hard drives this year so I’ll have plenty of storage space in the foreseeable future. Some new canvas or other art supplies would be great as well.

Can you tell something about your future releases?

If you like toys, there will be a collectible vinyl figure of Ollie, the Twitterrific mascot, available soon at the Iconfactory. As far as design work goes, I’ve got a lot of additions to existing icon sets planned, Stickers, Somatic, and maybe a few others. I’ll also continue to have new wallpapers and prints on my personal site and perhaps some original work for sale as well.

Thanks for chatting with us!

Thank you as well, I always appreciate the interest!