The Iconfactory: Icons in the Macintosh Industry

Posted on October 20, 2004 | Filed Under Internet

Founded in the mid-nineties, The Iconfactory remains a favorite of many Macintosh users who value quality icon art. The Iconfactory gives away much of its work for free, giving users custom work for holidays like their recently released Halloween icon set, but they also design custom icon pieces. If you think your life hasn’t been touched by The Iconfactory in some way over the past few years, I can almost guarantee you’re wrong.

Among its large customer base, the Iconfactory counts Apple, Microsoft (Messenger, Office X), Macromedia (Studio MX 2004), Aladdin Systems (Stuffit Deluxe), Extensis (Suitcase), Matterform Media (Spamfire) and many other well-known and up-and-coming companies as customers.

But why should we really care about icons? After all it’s not like they are really important in the big scheme of things, right? Wrong!

Take a look at Mac OS X — part of the thing that people like the most and rave about is the fluid look and feel, the realistic nature of the interface. That is the Iconfactory. Actually I don’t know if they designed anything in OS X, but these people had an effect on the way icon art has developed over the past 8 or nine years. That’s a pretty substantial contribution to the industry.

Gedeon Maheux, one of the founding members of The Iconfactory, is probably one of the nicer guys in the industry. Gedeon, Corey Marion and Talos Tsui brought together some of the best artists and designers to build a business out of a hobby — not a bad accomplishment in itself.

There are many icon sites on the Internet today, designing Mac hardware icons and everything else you can think of from Star Trek to TV shows, but it’s all inspired by three guys from Greensboro, NC that call themselves the Iconfactory.

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