Aligned Pixels

Meet Nick Paulson, a software developer from Rochester, New York. We had some time to speak with Nick about CloudApp, his future job at Square and of course, himself.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, Nick

I'm an 18-year-old Cocoa developer living in Upstate New York. I love everything Objective-C, but I'm also obsessed with design and pixel perfection.

When did you begin developing for the iPhone and Mac?

Well, if you want to call Applescript "developing" then I started probably 4.5 years ago with simple Applescripts. That evolved into Objective-C through the awesome Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X book by Aaron Hillegass. 

When did you begin work on CloudApp?

We began working on Cloud just over 2 years ago, roughly. Back then it was a project with @mschoening and I, and over time we added more and more people to the project to help contribute to what it has become today.

What sparked the interest in creating a client that would revolutionize the idea of file sharing on the web?

It started off as a simple tool for @mschoening and I to share screenshots and mockups in Photoshop. We wanted it to be quick, simple, and work with a hotkey. Eventually it became a workable app, and we sent it to a few friends who we thought would like it.  Turns out that they liked it more than we expected, and came back with feature requests.  CloudApp became part of our workflow, and part of our friend's, so we started building.

I see some competition in this market. Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to ensure you continue to beat other services that may come out in the future that do the same thing? 

At CloudApp, our mantra is to add what we love, and hope that our users love it too.  While we always have ideas on how to make things better, we take the "Apple approach" and do what we think is best, without focusing on our competition.

Congratulations on your internship at Square! What are you most excited about while working there?

I'm really excited to be working on a product that has a deep, low-level piece, along with a beautiful higher-level piece. The interaction with the reader is fascinating, and the designs are pixel perfect. Square is a fantastic product that I'm proud to have the ability to contribute to.

Do you have a "dream job?"

Honestly? I love what I'm doing now. It would be awesome to live in San Francisco and work on an awesome product there, but only time will tell what will happen in reality.

Where do you see yourself, CloudApp and your future work in 5 years?

I see myself evolving as a developer, designer, and overall, a thinker. As for CloudApp, I want it to gain motion and become the de-facto sharing service for files and links of all types.  Finally, as for my work, I don't really know.  It's really hard to know what is coming up in the next week, let alone five years from now. I just hope I'm loving my work, and enjoying my life.

Any tips for aspiring entrepreneurs and developers like yourself?

Stop thinking about positions, funding, or offices, and just build the product. You will only get so far without a working product ready to demo, share, or release. Build, iterate, and repeat. It's a never-ending cycle. Learn to love it, and you'll be set on all of your endeavors.

Thanks for your time Nick! You are a true example of the term "age is but a number."

http://www.nickpaulson.com

http://www.twitter.com/nckplsn

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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Meet Matt Patenaude, a software developer from Rhode Island. We had some time to speak with Matt about his development career, Bowtie, 13bold and his future projects.

We here at AlignedPixels absolutely love your stuff Matt! Mind sharing a little bit of information about yourself for our readers?

Well, I'm a software engineer from the beautiful city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. I'm currently at Brown University pursuing a degree in CS, and I make cool Mac apps. 

What first sparked your interest in computer programming?

Well it all started back in kindergarten. Things that light up, they're pretty exciting. I guess I first got the idea to start writing programs when I was in 7th grade, and I figured, since I like using computers so much, I should start making my own software. My first program was a little file size unit converter written in VBA in Excel. 

You talk about creating your first program in Excel. What was the first program you wrote in Xcode?

TuneConnect (http://www.tuneconnect.net) was the first real program I wrote on Mac. It started out in AppleScript, then slowly migrated to AppleScript Studio (which officially moved it into Xcode), and then finally with TuneConnect 2.0 it was rewritten with Cocoa, which made it my first ever Objective-C project.

That sounds awesome! What about Bowtie - when did that come into play? 

Bowtie came about a year later, it was a collaboration with graphic designer Laurent Baumann. He did the TuneConnect 2.0 icon back in the day before he was wildly famous, and we stayed in touch, writing little one-off apps together. He was pretty dissatisfied with most of the iTunes controllers on the market, but couldn't come up with a good idea for UI, so I made him something to play with where he could make up a new UI on the spot. And then we realized what a great idea we'd had.

Glad to hear that. Have things at 13bold changed ever since Laurent went to work for Apple?

Ha ha, well things aren't the same, that's for sure. Apple contracts typically prohibit people from working on outside projects. Luckily for me, most of the actual UI work for Bowtie and the like was done before Laurent was hired (some of it wasn't implemented at that point, but the mock-ups had already been completed).

Are there any projects that you have been working on lately. Possibly a Bluebird return or a Bowtie update?

I wish there were, but I'm afraid things aren't looking amazing for our current apps. Bluebird will likely never come back, especially after Twitter's "stop making Twitter clients" announcement (not to mention that there is no greater pain in this world than maintaining a Twitter client). As for Bowtie, the current release is quite solid. It may see one more small update in the future, but at this point, my hands are somewhat tied in terms of what I can do with it.

Why "13bold?"

We usually typeset it {13bold}, it's an allusion to CSS, a la { font: 13pt bold; }. The default label text in Mac OS X is Lucida Grande, bold, set at 13pt. To me it just struck as an awesome name for a software development label. As I recall, I thought of it in the shower. The full name of the group is technically "13pt BOLD", but it looks cleaner in ASCII as {13bold}. I was also recently contacted by the owner of the 13pt (http://13pt.com/) design studio, whose trademark preempts us by quite a bit, so I believe we might drop the "pt" entirely and just keep it {13bold}, one-word.

In 5 years where do you see yourself in both the career and personal aspects of your life?

Well hopefully at least I will have graduated by then. In the meantime, I've been doing a long-running internship with a particular fruit manufacturer, and if things go as planned, it would be nice to continue that relationship. But of course nothing is certain, and it would be silly to take anything for granted.

Any tips you can share for aspiring programmers?

The language doesn't matter. A lot of people focus on learning how to program in a certain language, but software engineering is a distinct skill set in and of itself. Once you learn to program, picking up a new language in a weekend is easy as pie.

Also, one of the most valuable pearls of wisdom I was given when I was just starting out was from Andy Matuschak, the developer of the Sparkle software update framework: you don't need to know everything, just where to find it. Learning to use Google and read documentation effectively is the most valuable skill you can have as an engineer.

And don't do what I did and latch on to an established developer and pepper them with questions 24/7. They have lives. Learn to be self-sufficient early on, and you'll learn things much faster.

Thanks Matt - we wish you the best of luck in the future :)

http://mattpatenaude.com

http://twitter.com/mattpat

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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Fonts, a visual representation of words printed on your screen in a way that is just pure art. 

Meet Fontcase 2.0, an update to an app thats been around the Mac for quite some time that is looking to make things a little bit easier this time around.

Overview

Simply put, Fontcase allows you to browse through your font collection with ease, simplicity and elegance. The app comes along with four tabs, each assigned a view; Fonts, Collections, Genres and Tags. For example, navigating to the Fonts tab will show your collection of fonts you currently have installed, enabled, disabled and more.

A feature thats new in Fontcase 2.0 is the ability to view your fonts within a split view. For example, selecting a font such as "Arial MT" will bring up a preview of it on the right hand side as well as the ability to view the "Body" and "Glyphs" that come with that font. 

Hovering over the font will bring up a preview of the other styles for it such as Italic, Bold, etc. 

Double tapping on the font will bring up a view of it's corresponding styles as well as previews

You can also customize the app even more in the "Preferences" which allows you to move the previews to the bottom, detect duplicate fonts and automatically activate new ones. 

Design

There's no surprise that there is so much to say about Fontcase's design, especially with a possible Apple Design Award in their sights. Kevin Kalle did an amazing job, especially when figuring out where exactly to place everything in this app which could be tough for most designers out there! 

I especially love the split view which provides you an easy to access visualization for fonts. 

Favorite Feature 

Figuring out what looks nice in a certain size is troublesome for certain designers out there, Fontcase 2.0 takes care of that with their new size slider.

I feel this is the best feature out there for one reason and one reason alone, importance. Seeing how something looks in size 9 compared to 50 is quite a difference and can change a whole lot of opinions so even though it is a small feature it has a very important purpose.

We had some time to speak with Pieter from Bohemian Coding about the app:

Well for starters. Whats new in 2.0 that wasn't in 1.0?

For one their is a completely new UI which, in my opinion is the most obvious thing to point out. Other than that performance has been enhanced with stability improvements and added features.

Is an ADA in your sights?

I sure hope so. I've definitely been doing my best to try to get FC 2.0 to that level of quality which I hope the users are happy about.

What was your favorite part when creating FC 2.0, development or design?

That's a tough one. Both are definitely not easy to separate especially since I love going back and forth on stuff to consider what might work best and tweaking it all just to get it perfect.

How do you feel FC 2.0 will change the future of typography?

I hope I've made it easier in FC 2.0 to compare and select the right fonts. There are a few other major features like the Typesetter, an editable webview where you can apply any of the fonts in your library to any element on the page. There's also an iOS companion app that shows font previews of the selected fonts on the Mac. With the much better UI and the new features I think it will be easier to see whether a font is right inside FC instead of testing different fonts out in the wild and going back and forth all the time.

Thanks Pieter! We really love Fontcase 2.0 and hope to see more in the future from you :)

http://www.fontcaseapp.com

http://www.twitter.com/Fontcase

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Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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Meet rockstar developer and designer Mike Rundle, a strong member in the design / dev community residing in Raleigh, NC. We had some time to speak with Mike about the beginnings of his life as well as some background on his work experience and his new venture, DesignThenCode.

Tell us a little bit about yourself Mike!

Hey there, I'm a designer & developer living in Raleigh, NC. I've been designing websites since the mid-90s, then in the early 2000s I started working on web apps and blogs. About when the iPhone came out I decided it was time to finally learn Objective-C and the Cocoa APIs so I could write Mac and iPhone apps. Nowadays I work on web, Mac, iPhone, iPad apps (both design and programming) and also write and speak about user interface design and development.

When did you first "try" a computer?

When I was about 9 or 10 there was a program in my school where students could program Apple computers (not Macs!) in Logo to make a turtle draw pictures on the screen. This blew my mind. A few years later my Mom got an Apple Performa 6200CD and that was my first, real, home computer.

What sparked your interest in developing and designing?

As soon as I got AOL hooked up to my Performa I started building websites hosted at members.aol.com then later on Tripod. That was fun and taught me about HTML and some JavaScript. Around that time I also got deeply involved in the underground AOL punter community where we'd write little programs that could boot other AOL members offline due to a number of security and performance issues with the AOL software. Most punters at that time were for Windows and written in Visual Basic, but I was one of the few people doing it on the Mac using OneClick. I'd build palettes that ran scripts that either punted people offline, scrolled in chatrooms, set up anti-punt protection (to stop others from punting you offline!) and more. My punters were named AOElephant and Hex and were pretty popular for awhile before that entire subculture died out.

As for what got me into design work, I was always drawing and sketching as a little kid. It was never random artwork, always a more architectural type of design: i used to design cars, sneakers, baseball cards and houses. Working on the web was a natural fit for my love of both programming and design.

Can you tell us a little bit about your project Beak and why you stopped it's development?

Beak was the first Mac app that I worked on. It was a WebView-based Twitter app (that is, the interface, although running as a native Mac app, was HTML and CSS) that I never totally finished.  I stopped working on it because, frankly, it became less exciting as the project drudged on. I may pick it back up again at some point, but if I do, it'll only include the features that I actually use in Twitter. Twitter's recent #newtwitter design has sparked my interest in working on Beak again, mostly because I like a simplified Twitter interface and am not a huge fan of the more complex side panel design they built. Who knows! More information about why I stopped working on Beak can be found in my blog entry on the subject: http://flyosity.com/flyosity/beak-is-dead.php

Which do you enjoy more; design or development?

I've thought about this for awhile, and it's tough to say, just like it's probably hard for a parent to pick a favorite child. I do both all day long, and although I love working on design problems, sometimes it's more satisfying to see things actually work in an application than to just look at a Photoshop mockup. I probably do more programming nowadays than design work, but that's just because of the projects I'm working on at the moment. 

Do you own your own company? 

I have an awesome full-time job working at Bronto Software on their marketing and automation suite of applications. The software is web-based so that keeps my web skills sharp, plus all my friends are there and it's just a really good company and vibe. I own Flyosity, LLC, which is the umbrella company for the apps I write, consulting I do, books I work on, and anything else that generates revenue from projects I work on in the nights and weekends. My typical day is 100% web work and then at night it's all Cocoa design and development. I wouldn't have it any other way.

DesignThenCode is an inspiration, what sparked the idea?

Thanks! Design Then Code was the culmination of a few different things kicking around in my head. The biggest inspiration for it was Jason Fried and his writing for 37signals. He published business advice on their blog for a number of years, then turned the blog entries into a more in depth PDF, then turned the PDF into a full-blown book which became a New York Times bestseller. He has a lot of advice and opinions on the field of business and entrepreneurship and he turned that focused attention into a digestible format for people to purchase and utilize. I have a somewhat unique take on things due to my experience as a software engineer and a designer, so I wanted to do a similar thing with getting my thoughts and advice down "on paper" and making it available to purchase online. Originally I had been approached by some book publishers to write a book on interface design, but I wanted it to be more practical and include Xcode projects and PSD files so I elected to do it all myself and publish it exactly how I wanted. It's worked out really, really well so far, so I can't wait to get some more tutorials up on the site.

Have any other projects currently in the works?

Yup, always! Currently I'm working on some new Design Then Code tutorials, my first iPhone game and then I have two fledgling ideas for Mac apps that I'm currently trying to get a little more polished. In addition to these apps and projects I'm speaking at three conferences this summer so my schedule is pretty packed. I'm really excited about it all though, lots of cool stuff coming out this year that I hope people really like.

Final words, thoughts, words of wisdom, etc?

Sure. So one thing that I'm really pushing lately is the concept of learning more, outside your field of expertise. The Design Then Code tutorials are all about designers learning how to program and programmers learning how to design. I hate it when a friend has an idea for an app but he can only design it, not build anything. Learning more and being able to do everything yourself when it comes to designing, building, and marketing software really is the key nowadays. No waiting on someone else, no need to pay someone to take care of something you can do yourself. I hope more people head down that path so they can all start building apps they've had in their minds for years.

Thanks Mike!

http://www.flyosity.com

http://www.twitter.com/flyosity

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

http://www.alignedpixels.com

Say hello to Rickie Sherman, a 19 year old graphic designer from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We had some time to speak to him about the many aspects of design he enjoys and his future. 

He talks about art, graphic design, his new job and freelance work and why you don't see much of it in the art industry. 

Rickie, tell us a little bit about yourself

Well, I'm 19 years old and I'm a huge fan of the arts. 

I originally started getting into art as a kid who naturally watched a lot of cartoons, but when my parents got me a PSP and a computer, I started trying to teach myself how to make custom themes.

You talk about art. Could you talk to us a little bit about the many aspects you enjoy about it?

I LOVE painting with watercolours. I've been doing it since my first art class in high school, and it's been something I can go to when designing gets too stressful. I also just started looking into photography and editing photos.

Thats great to hear. Do you think there is a market at all for freelance work in the art industry?

Compared to graphic design, no. It's much easier to make a living as a designer. However, My old teachers and art directors told me that expanding your horizons just in case you get lucky in more than one field is always a great idea.

With that said. Do you find yourself getting a job as a graphic designer or an artist in the future?

I actually just got with Carnival Labs as a contracted graphic designer! I'm very lucky to be working with such great people. There's some exciting stuff coming down the line as well. I wouldn't mind being a professional artist at all though, that was always my first love.

Thats great to hear! Is this a remote job or one in their office?

It's done remotely right as of now. Hopefully I can build a positive relationship and land a spot in the office!

Where do you see the community in 5 years, filled with new people?

I definitely see a lot of new faces in the future of the community. Now that Dribbble and websites of the like are popular, more people can get their names out and get good critique. I've seen a positive shift in the community's attitude as a whole, there are tons of new things being released to help the whole designing population. At this point, the community can only get bigger and better.

I can imagine that both art and graphic design is a huge part of your life. If you never got interested in either, where would you be today?

Well, if I wasn't doing any graphic design I'd definitely be trying to make it as a traditional artist. I honestly couldn't see myself doing anything else!

Any last words, remarks or tips?

A universal tip that I do have is to try as hard as possible, it will pay off more likely than not.

Thanks for your time Rickie! We wish you the best of luck in the future

http://www.rickiesherman.com

http://www.twitter.com/lesloups

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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    Anyone who has a Mac has either modded or attempted to mod their icons, dock and especially their folders.

With that said meet Alumin, a new folder set for Mac OS X created by the wonderful UI and Icon designer Wil Nichols.

Alumin contains folder replacement icons for almost any and every folder you can think of that comes stocked with your Mac such as Documents, Movies and Photos. Not only does Alumin come packed with replacements for traditional folders but also provides a new look to your Mac, I've never seen anything like it; kudos Wil.

We had some time to talk to Wil a little bit about the folder set which he would love to share some information about to all of you.

Wil, could you tell me a little bit about your folder set, Alumin? 

The icon set came as a result of me being bored while I was supposed to be working on my coursework. At the time, I had no commercial work, so I had plenty of time then to work on it. I've been swamped by school and commercial work recently, and unable to work on the set much.

To see previews of the set: http://www.dribbble.com/players/wilnichols

How many icons are included in the set?

I've got thirty-three so far, and eventually it'll be 150 by the time I'm done, with the incomplete folders, and color variants.

What types of folders can we find in the set? 

The color variants included are those I've shown thus far; I won't be including more. I may be releasing a glyphed version, but I'm currently undecided. I'm taking requests for individual folder icons, currently.

How long have you currently been working on it?

I've been working on the set since late November. I'm guessing it'll be completed near the end of June, depending on if I pursue any of the internships I'm currently looking in to.

Were all wondering, is this going to be a free set? 

The set will be free, with donations greatly appreciated. I won't be able to work this coming year, as I will then by a full IB student, so anything is helpful. If people wish to use it commercially, a license must be purchased through my online store.

Thanks Wil! We look forward to seeing and using your folder set in the future :)

http://www.wilnichols.com

http://www.twitter.com/wilnichols

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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For some, using an app by Tapbots makes you feel like your on top of the world while for others, using Twitter itself gives you that same feeling. With this in mind meet Tweetbot, a new and revolutionary Twitter app by Tapbots, seriously. Like us, Tapbots caters to the needs of the people, in their case delivering us a great app for Apple devices while in our case it's writing blog posts about fellow designers and developers and their products.

I feel that Tapbots has nothing left to prove each and every time they release an app but time and time again they prove me wrong; go figure. Weighbot allowed you to track your weight, Convertbot, convert units, Calcbot, help a guy like me with his math and now....

Say Hello to Tweebot :) 

Entering the biggest market on the App Store isn't easy, not too mention competing with hundreds of other Twitter apps on the market, however it's just business. If Mr. Zuckerberg didn't attempt to compete with Tom we would all still be using Myspace and if the Zune didn't try to rip off the iPod we would all just have iPod's, oh wait; most do.

General business knowledge aside you can say that Tweetbot is the best Twitter client out there and it is the best looking client out there; which in my opinion, it is.

Design

Let's be honest, the app is fast, blazing fast, even with a custom UI.

All development aside, the UI is fabulous, even logging in is an experience and sometimes, I like to put in the wrong credentials just so I can see the fluid animations of that UIAlertView go nuts. 

Tweebot also isn't cluttered like most clients, providing you an option to hold down on the "Favorites" or "Search" tab to view more choices of navigation noticing that their is no need for extra tabs that people barely use anyway. 

Lastly, tapping and holding a tweet is a privilege, showcasing a custom UIActionSheet with Twitter communication options we are all familiar with but in a nicer way ;)

Overall, the whole look and feel of Tweetbot is awesome and you can tell that Mark and Paul put extra care in this toy.

Favorite Feature

Tweetbot offers something that most clients don't, getting work done in the background.

In the apps settings you have options to enable allowing to do stuff in the background; meaning when you post a tweet the compose view will dismiss itself and when your tweet has been posted, a notification with slide down from the top letting you know that it has; neat right?

Final Thoughts

Time and time again we have heard the same thing, don't bother making a new Twitter client, there's no point. Maybe it's because the market is too big, maybe it's because the official Twitter app is free or maybe it's because everything needs to be done just right in order to please everyone.

To me, I don't know when their will be another Twitter client thats as good as Tweebot is or when I will find another app development company in general that does things as well as Tapbots does but for now I can honestly say, it's been quite a road.

I gladly got the time to ask Mark Jardine, designer for Tapbots a few questions about Tweetbot:

Mark, you jumped into possibly the most competitive market on the App Store to date, why?

We started Tweetbot before Twitter bought Tweetie. The two big players at the time were Tweetie 2 and Twitterrific and we felt we could provide an alternative experience to the market. Twitter was also a service we both used often so we had strong feelings for how we wanted our client to work. We also love challenges. 

In your mind, what seperates Tweetbot from all the others?

We think it's the overall experience. Our goal was to make Twitter fun. It's what we've tried to do with all of our apps from the very beginning. 

The overall presentation of Tweetbot is fantastic. What was the thought process when trying to figure out what would work best for everyone using it on a working device?

Thanks! That's hard for us to answer. We started by building the app for ourselves. Pastebot's drawer was pretty successful so we knew from the start that we'd be using it again. Everything else sort of fell into place. I'd have to say our Alpha/Beta testers really helped us shape Tweetbot into what everyone is using today. 

Whats next for Tweebot?

We have a lot of work ahead of us. Right now we are focusing on fixing bugs and adding features. Our users are really helping us improve the app. Once it feels solid to us, we'll decide what to do next. 

Thanks Mark, we look forward to the next update!

  http://www.tapbots.com/software/tweetbot/ http://www.twitter.com/tapbots

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

http://www.alignedpixels.com

Meet Emanuel Sa, a 25 year old, Graphic Designer from the country of Portugal. We had some time to speak to him about the many aspects he learned over the past 3 years he spent designing and figuring out what he wanted to do with his life.

He talks about his life before and after design, freelance work and shares some insight for finding your own style.

Hey Emanuel! Can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

I'm Emanuel Sá, 25 years old, a Graphic Designer from Portugal.

How did you first get interested in design?

Well, I've always been interested in art, in many aspects and since I was young I knew I wanted to work in that area of work. I focused my studies around arquitecture but soon found that what I really wanted to do with my life was design, which most people were still figuring out. After I dropped out of The School of the Arts I started studying and designing on my own, 4 years ago. After about a year of interaction with Laurent Baunmann, Jonas Rask, Phil Antoni, I started freelancing.

You talk about interaction with other designers. What exactly is Iconlicious, your personal company or a collaboration of sorts?

Iconlicious started as a collaboration between me and the great Brazilian designer, Marcelo Marfil. Marcelo was starting his career at the time and I thought he was a great partner to do something with. I wasn't wrong their were just some differences we had to work out, such as the future we wanted for Iconlicious, not own own specifically. Marcelo made the decision to try to work on his own, which I encouraged and understood and from what you can see, he was clearly right. Not much has changed though, we collaborate a lot and maybe, in the near future you can see something like Iconlicious out soon. For now, Iconlicious works as a showcase of my Portfolio, stuff I have been working on for the last 3 years.

I love the style of icons you create. Can you talk a little bit about the process you take to create each one?

It's not much different than most of my colleagues, most of the concepts start after some brainstorming with the client, some sketches are done and once a concept "clicks" we render it in Photoshop.

You talk about Photoshop. Is that the only software you use to create your magic?

For now, yes. It's not a perfect tool but it's the best thats offered at the moment.

When your not designing your?

I love sports, especially football (European). Other than that you can find me on the beach in the summer. Freelance work can sometimes be an unfair position to be in but you need to learn to control it by scheduling your time wisely to make sure you don't get an infinite amount of work at once.

The most important thing you have learned over the past 3 years of doing both freelance and personal work would be?

Love what you do or go do something else.

Be unique; find something you can improve on and be great at it. 

Thanks for your time Emanuel, any last words or thoughts you would like to share with our readers?

It's important to have references but it's also important to identify what you need to learn from those references. If you keep searching references you'll hardly develop your own style. My main advice for someone starting is, get to be technically perfect and then disconnect from everything else and just do what YOU love and enjoy. 

Thanks for your time and insight Emanuel!

http://www.iconlicious.com

http://www.twitter.com/emanuelsa

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

http://www.alignedpixels.com

Meet Chris Masterson, a young icon and interface designer from Minnesota. Chris gladly gave up some time to speak with us about himself and his design aspirations for our blog.

He talks about freelance, his inspirations, work opportunities and of course, himself. If you are a young designer Chris is proof, age is but a number. 

Hey Chris, why don't you tell us a little about yourself?

Well, I'm a young icon and UI designer trying to make the world a prettier place. That might sound a bit cheesy, but I really love using beautiful things (I'm an avid Apple user) and I sincerely enjoy helping make awesome stuff. I freelance beside school and I really love it!

When did you first become interested in design?

Well, I first started noticing design sometime between 2007-08. The release of the iPhone was the beginning of a love affair between Apple and myself, and I really started understanding some basics of what's beautiful. As I'm sure you'll hear again and again, MacThemes was a great start for me. I started reading and learning about design and that really helped me get to where I am today. I made a few wallpapers and then started working on some iPhone icons for a 3rd party theme. I loved the feeling I got from making something beautiful and executing the ideas in my head, and from there it just fell into place. After that was Macristocracy, which to describe it as I would have when I first joined, was a much more beautiful MacThemes with icons that I actually loved. The community is really supportive and that's what got me to decide that design was what I'm going to be doing the rest of my life.

What software do you typically use to get work done. Photoshop, Illustrator, Cinema 4d, etc?

I use Photoshop for almost everything. Occasionally Illustrator for some vector work, but it's pretty much 100% Photoshop. I'd love to learn how to use Cinema 4D!

Do you freelance at all; if so what are the main advantages you find when dealing with clients, work opportunities, etc?

Hmm, that's a tough question. Yes, I freelance, but I've had no experience working full time for a design company to compare, and I've still got time until I can work at many places, age-wise. Advantages? I'd say variety of work. I love meeting with clients and getting to know them personally, but mostly what they really want to achieve and how to make it happen. 

Freedom with working hours is also great and works well with school and other activities.

With that said would you be more interested in a full time job at a design agency or doing freelance work for the rest of your life? 

Another tough question! I'm completely open to both. I see the advantages to full-time jobs but also freelancing. Let's just say that if I had the opportunity, there are a few places I'd really love to work full-time. 

What are some of your favorite websites you visit on almost a daily basis? 

Twitter would definitely be first. I check it constantly, and I love getting to know everyone! Dribbble and Macristocracy are probably the two main design sites I visit after that, and then you've got the news sites like TUAW and Engadget. I should also mention Grooveshark, which is playing through about 90% of my day. 

Do you have any inspirations or people you look up to that you would like our readers to know more about?

I really like a lot of designers in this community, but if I had to choose one person that I hope to be more like, It'd definitely be Natalie Nash (@pinkyvonpout). She's been really helpful with my freelance career and helping me grow in my design. She's got a great heart and I know I'm not the only person she helps out. I should also say that Everaldo Coelho is a great inspiration. I don't see much of his design anymore, but he's always got a positive spirit and that's something I really value in a person.

Could you give any advice for young aspiring designers before they take the plunge into Photoshop?

 Observe. Take a look around and fill your life with beautiful things and try to understand why they're beautiful. Not everyone can use a Mac or afford the latest iPhone, but that doesn't mean you can't design. Keep your head up! That's definitely something I would repeat. Everyone goes through tough times, but what matters is if you keep trying, and learn from your past mistakes. Refer to Apple's icons and sites like Dribbble for the basics but really, just have fun and experiment! I think that's something a lot of designers forget when they get farther in their career, but make sure that you're having a good time, or it's not worth it. 

Thanks so much for your time Chris! Any final words or remarks you would like to give us on things your working on, etc?

Stay humble. You may think you're the greatest designer out there, and you might be, but remember that that doesn't mean you're above anyone else. Keep touch with your beginnings and the people who helped get you to where you want to be. 

Thanks so much for your time Chris! Believe it or not it really means a lot when we see such a young fellow like yourself contribute such a large amount to a small community.

http://www.chrismasterson.me

http://www.twitter.com/chrismasterson

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Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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If your jailbroken there are tons of apps, tweaks, mods and themes to choose from, but have you passed up one that might be too good to miss? Notified, available on the Cydia Store is reinventing the wheel with chrome rims with Notified for iPhone, a push notification app looking to give you information as quick and easy as possible.

Overview:

Notified keeps all of your information stored in one central location where you are free to see your list of apps and their notifications in chronological order. Also built into the app is a huge feature that allows minimalistic users to hide the alert boxes and just see the main sector of information. For example if Daniel added me on Facebook Notified would read "Daniel accepted your friend request," with the above cell having the Facebook title and one notification available. However, if I were to hide that alert I would only see "Facebook" and the representation that I have 1 notification available, pretty neat huh?

Notified also allows you to clear your notifications list, collapse or expand all the tabs at once and even bookmark or delete certain notifications for future reference. The app also allows you to customize certain aspects to your liking such as the animations, badges, lock orientation and even the way you get alerts and where you want certain alerts to redirect to. For example, if I got a message from Facebook and I wanted Notified to redirect me to an alternative app such as Friends, that maybe didn't have Push Notifications it could do that instead of opening up the traditional Facebook app. 

We had some time to talk with the designer, Daniel Waldron about the app:

So, whose idea was it?

Mine. I saw the need for the app had some ideas how it should work then found Emillio who was one of the only devs I could find that was willing to tackle the project.

What was the thought process, both design and development aspects?

I had an idea of how it should look and work, I made mockups, we were in development for a while and we both collectively agreed that it was getting very heavy. We had support for theming and all kinds of stuff that we eventually decided wasn't necessary. We scraped it and started from scratch taking the Apple approach to it. Making it clean and simple, in return keeping it light weight and snappy. We both bounced ideas off of each other throughout the whole process both in design and development.

Do you think Apple will eventually just recreate what you made?

From what I hear on the Apple rumor sites and everything right now, yes. I am not sure if it will be like how we did it, knowing Apple they might borrow some thoughts and ideas, but will create their own idea. It will probably be much better since they can write the OS around it greatly reducing the limitations that we have today

Was push notifications in native iOS "broken" to you or just not right?

Not broken, just not right. I think apple at the time thought that was the best way to present them without making them too cumbersome, but they weren't thinking that users were soon going to have 20 apps on their device all throwing push notifications up all over their screen. I just felt that dismissing these popups because I was trying to write a message etc. was just getting out of control, because once dismissed that was it. Often when you would dismiss a notification it would be lost and gone forever. Forgotten. I wanted to change this and be able to look at the notifications on my own time, and have the ability to go back and look at past notifications as well. 

Any other comments, Daniel?

I can comment on the design more than coding, but I really wanted to make something that would be similar in design and function to what Apple would do. Keep it clean, lightweight, and unobtrusive. The openness that Emillio and I had going into this project really benefited the app. We both got on the same page about the main objective very quickly and were very receptive to each others input and ideas about both the design and functionality. We constantly questioned each others thinking and didn't take it personal at all. We were both very emotionally involved in the app and loved what we were making, I like to think that the passion and dedication put into the app shows. It really helped to make the app what it became, and made it better for everyone.

Thanks for your time Dan and thanks also to Emilio for helping create such a terrific app!

http://www.notifiedapp.com

http://www.twitter.com/notifiedapp

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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For many, getting's things done is like winning the lottery, everyone hopes to win. However, for Task Eater Developer and Designer Tobias Wiedenmann he doesn't wish to win, but help you win. Task Eater is a sleek and simple to do list application for the iPhone and iPod Touch currently available on the App Store for $0.99. 

Overview: 

Unlike Things, ToDo and 2Do theres nothing complex about Task Eater and their is nothing that can leave you asking, why? The app comes along with three main views, Timeline, Tasks and Finished, names we should all be familiar with. Task Eater aims at providing the user with easy to use functions that anyone who has used an Apple device before should already be familiar with. For example, the plus button on the top right hand side when you first launch the application dedicated to allowing you to add a task, simple huh? Another example is when you are done writing your task but might want to set a notification time to remind yourself, simply hit the clock glyph and set your time, so yeah, it's that easy! 

For more tips and tricks be sure to check out their nicely written FAQ. 

Of course Task Eater allows you to delete certain tasks and even head over to the "Finished" view if you accidentally pressed something you didn't mean to press; mistakes happen you know. You can also create a backup of the whole application, tasks and all just incase you Jailbroke and want to restore your device and what not but hey, whose judging? 

You can also customize the look of the application, just a bit, by changing fonts, adding badges and even choosing which order to display your tasks in.

Design

There's not much to say about this applications design other than that it looks fabulous. Tobias did an excellent job managing both the development and design aspects of this application even with the little time he had throughout the day so thanks man :)

Also this young lad isn't afraid to give the users something to do, adding customizable features we talked about in the overview incase someone had a different opinion.

Favorite Feature

Icons are something I take a lot of pride in, especially if they are supposed to be on my device. With that said, my overall favorite feature in Task Eater is the icon itself and the ability to add your own icons for your tasks straight from iTunes.

This puts a whole new perspective in the GTD category in the App Store since no one has allowed anyone to do this before. (To my knowledge) 

Again Tobias, awesome job!

Final Thoughts

Overall, I feel Task Eater is a must buy and definaltely deserves the spot not only on your device but in the Top 100 on the App Store. Feel free to buy the application here for $0.99, a steal. 

Interview with Tobias

We got the chance to ask Tobias a few questions about the application and how his development career came to be.

In short:

I'm an independent designer/developer from Stuttgart, Germany. 

I started to play around with icon / UI design inspired by various desktop modding sites like MacThemes.

At that time I started to learn coding for OS X. After about 1 or 2 years with smaller projects and a lot learning about the framework, Apple announced iOS 4 with Local Notifications.

Most todo apps integrated thousand of features I didn't need. I just use todo apps for my daily stuff, why I also don't want a full-featured GTD client.

I think it took about 7 or 8 months from the start until the app arrived in the store.

Thanks again Tobias!

http://www.tobiaswiedenmann.com/

http://www.twitter.com/thyraz

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Thank you so much for reading a post on Aligned Pixels. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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Hey! Please introduce yourself to our readers and give them an overview on who you are and where your from, Adrian

I'm Adrian Kenny, a young Canadian and freelance designer based out of Sudbury, ON.

We see you do freelance work. Could you explain the process you undergo with clients to make the most out of exactly what they need done?

Well, usually I would figure out what they need and if any wire framing had already been done on their end. Then it's all about working with the budget they have at the time and their instructions of course. The hardest part throughout the whole process would be the last step which involves tweaking it to their liking.

Do you plan on creating your own company or agency for your future work and endowments?

I thought about it and I really don't know if I'd have too much time; although I'd love to brand myself under a company name to call my own but it's really difficult with school in the way at the moment.

In your opinion, what defines a person that is ready to take on freelance work?

Well, first off you have to be confident and professional considering it's tough to get clients, especially the pissy ones. I feel as if you really need to take it seriously in order to do well in the industry, almost like working in an office in real life.

You talked about being from Canada. Do you find living in Sudbury really limits you in terms of job opportunities more than it would someone living in California?

Totally, this place stinks. The closest place with good jobs would be Toronto where some companies have already asked me to work for them :)

When your not designing your....?

Getting it on, Eating, Playing Black Ops

What websites do you like to visit on a daily basis?

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Dribbble

Are their any projects you are working on currently that you would like to tell us a little bit about?

Hmm, I owe my friend a website that I have been slacking on and feel really horrible about... Other than that I just completed two terrific icons for a couple broker applications for iOS and released a Mac app called CodeUp.

Thanks for your time Adrian, we hope to see some great work from you in the future!

http://www.adriankenny.com

http://www.twitter.com/kennyadr

To all of our readers,

Thank you so much for reading an interview post on Aligned Pixels. While this is our main sector of content we would appreciate it if you stay tuned for another next Monday. Be sure to follow us on both Tumblr and Twitter to stay up to date with us and our content!

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