Archive for December, 2002
MailDrop 2.0 Icon Story Tuesday, December 3rd, 2002 by Mike
Okay everyone, time for a little horn-tooting PR for a “design the icon�? contest I won on November 18th. I think the busyness of the season and Thanksgiving holiday threw me off, because I’d intended to mention this sooner. :-)
Anyway, Matt Henderson, the owner of MakaluMedia (the company I’m design director for), alerted me of an icon contest being offered at Erik Barzeski’s NSLog weblog. Erik runs Freshly Squeezed Software, makers of various Mac OS X applications, including a Mail Merge app called MailDrop. It turns out that MailDrop is being updated to 2.0 and was in need of a new icon.
Well, I figured what the heck. While I have 15-some years of graphic design experience, I’ve never done a Mac OS X icon before. I thought this project could be fun, challenging and educational. Better yet, the icon concept they were looking for was somewhat cartoony, and hey, I love cartooning. So I took on the project.
Erik liked the direction in my sketches and rough icon ideas, so I proceeded with the icon project and ended up winning the contest. The final set of application icons are posted with this article. We’re still in the process of finalizing the app’s document icon.
My icon building process took a little time to sort out at first. I ended up working in Macromedia Fireworks, because I could use vector art, yet see immediately how my changes would appear in pixels. I also experimented with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, but because of my daily use of Fireworks and its vector/pixel feature, it just suited me best.
Once I had a final icon, I exported a master PNG file with transparency. Then I opened the file with Photoshop 7 for conversion into icons using a handy Photoshop plugin from IconFactory, called IconBuilder. At $69 It’s not cheap, however, for the time it saves doing icons, I can see its value. I love that IconBuilder has no use restrictions (other than a nag screen which appears after multiple uses), because this allowed me to fully test it out before we decide to purchase it.
If IconBuilder is a little too high for your budget, there are other free and shareware tools out there, like Icon Composer (included with the Xcode Tools on the OS X developer CD) or the $15 shareware tool, Iconographer.
Should an icon for OS X be in your future, check out these helpful Apple documents: Icon Genres and Families, Suggested Process for Creating Aqua Icons, and Tips for Designing Aqua Icons. Here’s another useful reference: OS X Icon Tutorial from O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.
Overall, it was a great challenge, and indeed, very educational. In fact, it felt very good to dive into something I’d never done before!
Ok, here’s my final PR spiel for this Friday: If you happen to need a little icon work or any other type of design work (web or print), please feel free to drop me a line. :-)
Have a great weekend!
lamictal price
Lamotrigine, also known as Lamictal, a drug class phenyltriazine, which are not chemically linked to existing antiepileptic drugs. It has been clinically proven that Lamictal when used with existing antiepileptic drugs is very effective in reducing seizure frequency and also seizures. As previously mentioned, Lamictal alone can not cure epilepsy completely, but it helps by controlling seizures as long as you take it.
buy lamictal
A person suffering from epilepsy can only be considered if he had two seizures, which were formed by any known disease. Some of the known diseases that can cause seizures are alcohol withdrawal and low blood sugar. It is not possible to catch the actual cause of seizures. It can also be a problem of heredity or can be caused by any brain injury.
Important Lamictal Information: -
lamictal generic
It is advisable that you regularly visit their doctor during the initial few months of your treatment with Lamictal. Regular visits will keep your doctor updated on your condition. This enables him to make decisions about your dosage if you experience in any kind of side effects. He might ask you to reduce your dosage or check for other reasons related side effects.