Last month I was honored to be interviewed by Mac+ magazine. Read the full interview below.

Wich companies do you work for? What kind of works do you do? Do you create only icons?

I am art director at Yellow Icon Studio and also a design consultant for Linspire Inc. in San Diego.
The Yellow Icon Studio is located in the beautiful city of Curitiba, South Brazil, but it was born global. As Aristóteles would say: “ we are not greeks neither athenians, we are citizens of the world.” We work with big, medium and small companies from all over the planet. We have a large list of clients in almost 30 countries including companies like: Apple, Symantec, Roxio, Parallels, Bell Canada, O2, Siemens, America Online and many others.

Our core business is all about interface design and iconography. However, we do all kind of creative jobs, graphic design, webdesign, illustrations, animations, advertisement, etc.
Despite most of our clients are technologic companies, we also attend other sectors. Last year, for example, we have made a project for a nuclear energy company, and also another project for a company specialized in portuary automaiton. A few days ago we received a request to create the visual identity for a laundry company in Italy.
This diversity of work, cultures, geographies, nacionalities makes our work pretty exciting.

From where the desire to work with design and art came from? And how did you start working with icons?

My father was a construction worker. When I was still a very young a kid I used to watch him take my mother plates and pans and used them as a french curve to draw in his old notebook some projects he called round stairs. I think that’s when both my interest in design and my faith in my father dreams were born.

My first “official” job was in 97 and I was almost 18. I was a projects designer in a big architecture/decoration office. At that time only a few people used computer to design furniture, and I wasn’t an exception. In 98 Dirceu Veiga ( a friend of mine who is also a designer ) indicated me to assume his position as an illustrator of school books in a very important Publishing House in Brazil. It was there that i first made contact with a PC. As soon as I have learned the basics of the machine and photoshop 3, I decided to buy one computer for my home. With little experience in computers I went to a store to make a get some price rates and it was there that I first saw an Apple Macintosh. Altough I didn’t know the difference between a Mac and PC, once Macs were so beige, palid and ordinary as any lowsy PC. I didn’t bought the Mac of course, but I was in love with the blue folder icon.
My first experiments with iconography weren’t sophisticated at all. It was just a silly attempt to replace the Windows yellow folder.
In 2001, Microsoft and Apple released new versions of their operational systems. The Linux was already a sucsess in servers, and was beginnig to dawn as a desktop. I had tried a few Linux Distributors and they really made a good impression. Unlike the Mac OS and the Windows, the Linux had several graphic interfaces that work under a graphic server, the X11. Among them the Window Maker – a Nextstep interface clone created by the brasilian Alfredo Kojima – and the Gnome seemed fantastic to me. But despite liking other interfaces, KDE was the one that really captivated me. Not as much by the visual, but for the functionality and the fact that it’s easy to use. The interface looked a lot like the MS Windows 98, which in my opinion was easier to use at the time as it was aestheticaly problematic.
It was in that context that I started to create an icon theme that later I called Crystal.
In the same year I was invited to join the marketing department at ConectivaSA, today known as Mandriva. Helio Castro, developer of the KDE and workmate, was the first one to show interest in the graphics and initially released some of my pieces on kdelook.org. The icons had a grat acceptance and later the theme would be added to the official KDE.
Today the Crystal Project icons are used in virtually thousands of softwares, websites and other medias around the world.

- Wich was your biggest job? Do you have any that you didn’t like?

I’ve done a lot of things and I usually don’t grade them as big or small. I do the best possible with the available resources (technology, time, etc.).
At this time, for instance, we are working in a project alongside the worldwide known german company, Siemens. It’s been great to work with one of their teams, composed of developers and designers, all them extremely prefessional people.

Systems and interfaces have a lot of different limitations, but they demand the same intelectual knowlodge and creative investiment. Due to these and some others reasons it is very diffucult to grade a project.

In general, I usually like the last project I am developing the most. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like the old ones, it’s just the evolution.
Recently we worked on the Toast 8 interface. The project has arrived with a very short time line. I really enjoyed the icons and they were well accepted by the client. Beside the icons, we redesigned the whole software interface. We Have remodeled everything. We improved the usability, used and abused of the image core, video core and coreanimation resources of the MacOSX. We placed the icons as a “Dock” in the left of the mother window, transparencies, shiny and translucent status bars. 2 months of hard work. The new version needed to be ready for the MacWorld. They had a few set backs with the code development, so the programers had to cut a few resources. The result is the interface you know. Even tough we had these incompletenesses a lot of people liked it. I wish We could have the full interface we designed. Beside the icons theres not much left of the interface we created. Anyways, still a fabulous work.

- What is your work method? What are the steps, from the idea conception to the final product? What softwares do you use? Do you make anything by free hand?

The first step, in an iconography project, is naturally the briefing. We extract from the client the maximum of possible informatio. Project objectives and user profiles, including sociocultural characteristics and specefic habits, those are crucial information.
With the briefing in hands, we get the team together for a first brainstorm. Icons in graphic interfaces are simplifications of complex proccesses. And they work connecting a representation to a concept. That’s the moment when the team tries to understand the concepts behind the procces and sugest possible representations. All is recorded and sent to the client appreciation. This process can be made as long as necessary for us to find the ideal concept. There is no drawing in this fase.
Once concepts aredefined and approved, the third step it’s the definition of style. In case of software icons that are going to be used in specific operational systems, we observe the identity manuals created by the manufacturers. Apple and Microsoft, for example, provide Guide Lines that regulate the quantity of colors, perspective, ilumination and other details.
It is also in that moment that we choose the parameters fo the icon family. Many times we have more than one artist per project. Those parameters are necessary for the design uniformity.

Icons, according to semiotics are representations that relate with an object by similarity. Subtype of icons are, images, diagrams and the metaphores.

In GUI ( General User Interface ) there is one more category of representations that are very popular: the symbols, used in interfaces as icons are for the semiotic a different category.
The psychodynamic of clors also deserves a special attention in that moment.
The definition of the family concept must consider 3 basic points that should be similar in all icons: 1 – Semiotic category, 2 – Color scheme, 3 – Rendering.
Now with all those informations defined it comes the time to draw. We create the first version with wireframes and a medium level of details that are sent to the client. Those wireframes can be handmade or in vector.
After the client approval we iniciate the rendering. Normally the icons are created in vector using Adobe Illustrator and after they are exported and finalized in Photoshop.

It is hard to work with icon design? What does it take to survive in that market?

Actually, icons are just a part of the work, certainly the most visible. What we do is design focused on people and not the object.
Put together, humanism, psychology, semiotic and design. You will have “interaction design”.
The expression “humanism” refers generically to a series so values and ideals related to the celebration of the human being. The term, however, have others meanings, that confict but I don’t intend to discuus that. It’s enough to say that when the greek phylosopher Protágoras after reflection said: “ the human being as the measure of all things”, he lauches the basis in wich the humanis was defined.
Our work is to project a human-computer interaction, having the human being as the measure and the conductorof all things.
With the advent of the so called web 2.0, this design focus on users has been discussed.
The difficulties of this segment are the same of others. It is important to maintain alert and updated. Here as any other segment the curiosity it’s the biggest valor of the professional.

Tell us a bit about yourself, Where you grow up, your professional formation, the places you worked for…

I was born in Curitiba, a quite big and beautiful city located in South Brazil. I am 29 years old and I am a father of a beatufil little girl called Milena that 3 years old.
I have worked was a furnuture designer in 1997 and as an illustratr of child books since 2001 when I started working was a designer. I have never spent too much time at a single job. I don’s like the safety that commodity offers. I rather put everythin at risk at least once a week. It makes me feel alive.
I could say I am a self-taught personif that was possible, in fact no one learns on it’s on. I read a lot, but i havent take many classes.
I believe that to know with wisdom is to know at least 2 things: First of all to know with wisdom is to know that you don’t know everything.
Second: the wise man undesrtand that “ only the simple man can know with wisdom” for one rwonderful reason: only simple persons know how to know
without having to prove it that knows.
You probably know someone that is always trying to proof the he knows more than you do. I don’s want to be that kind of people, I rather the simplicity of the simple man.
I don’t like to talk about my academic formation ( even so because it is’t a big thing) but I don’t want anyone to be frustrated. I have a degree in Teology and currently I am a psycoanalysis student. I am also a design student in the Lemon School in Curitiba. Wich by tha way it’s fantastic! I recommend.

- Do you like what you do? Are you professionaly happy?

I work with a team of wonderful people, in a great work environment with great equipments. We have a ping pong table and a playstation vídeo game in the creation room. shelves full of snacks and candy, flexible working time, free movies sections and twice a week we get together to watch the last episodes of Lost and Heroes on the big projecttion screen we have at the office.
This is all fantastic and it wasn’t easy to get here. We invested in many dreams for that to become real.
I have learned by experience that there is a big difference between dream and fantasy. Fantasy is day-dream, to “miss me there” and imagine yourself in a diferrent place that can be geographic or social. Doesn’t matter. The dream is different. Dreams make you pregnant of new a reality, they consume you from inside, they feed of everything that is in you. And if you love God, respect the other and life, everything gains sincronism and conectivity. Even the most absurd scene becomes a conspiracy of the goodness. You learn how to get each rock in the way to build a way with the rocks themselves.
Yes, I feel very realized. But no I won’t stop here.

- Do you see yourself doing anything else? Would you change your carrer?

I really like what I do. I don’t know if I could change. I love the colors, the shapes, and above all i love the way people feel and they perceive the wolrd.
But as anyone know, design and art don’t walk holding hands. I miss producing somthing more authorship like. I have a feel medium term projects. Dig’s Family, a famly of characters i had created for strips. And a book collection for children thas is going to be called “ The color and poetry”.
Besides the passion for design I ahve another big love:the psycoanalisys. If hypothetically i was going to do anything else it would probably be connected to that.

- A lot of pople didn’t like the new Adobe CS3 icons. What do you think about that?

The CS3 “icons” are actually “symbols”. Conceptually, symbols are representation base don conventions and what differs them drastically from the icon concept wich is to relacionat with the object by similarity.
In graphic interfaces icons are simplifications of complex proccesses and work connecting a representation to it’s concept. A good example of icon is what represents that text editor in MasOSX. The image of a pen over a a writting page remets to a chain os significations that communicate exactly what the software do.
I cannot find where de Ps of the Photoshop, for example, communicate what it does. I get curious, regarding the translation to arabic or chinese. It gotta be at least funny.
I don’t like the new adobe suite icons because of the simple fact that they are not icons. I enjoy the minimalismn specially because the mininum can communicate. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.