This Week's Sponsor:

Kolide

Ensure that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta.


An interview with the graphic designer Emanuel Sà.

I told you guys, MacStories Festival isn’t just a simple BIG giveaway contest.

No, it’s more. It’s an event, a real festival for all you Mac and iPhone users out there. So, what have we got here? An exclusive interview with the famous graphic designers Emanuel Sà.

You can find his official website here: http://www.emanuelsa.com/

Enjoy! :)

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


I’m Emanuel Sá, 23 Years old, Portuguese. I’m a graphic designer, specialized in Icon and User Interface design.

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


It all started 3/4 Years ago, I had a very boring day work, i needed to have an hobbie to keep exercising design, and i met Mac Os X Tiger, it at 10.4.5, customization was really powerful system wide, so i started working on themes.

My first and only one was Enzo, I was trying to do something very different from the current regular styled themes, all of them very “the same” old architecture typical to them system, so i designed Enzo.

01

01

At the same time I needed someone to help me, I was thinking about replacing the whole system, theme and icons, so i contacted Improv Pastence, aka, Dan Deming-Henes to help me with themepark ( dude, it was awesome, but very messy ) and I “tried” to contact Jonas Rask to help me on the icons, but hey, he was one busy guy…I contacted once, twice, no reply! I had to be really stubborn  so I could get an answer from him, I guess being that stubborn helped, as he finally replied, positively!

But sadly it was a transition time, leopard was around the corner, Jonas was at the top and i believe already working on the Office 2008 suite, so we ended up just releasing a beta of the theme to the public.

It helped me learning the system, the Human Guidelines, so I started to do more, so since we couldnt theme Leopard I started working on icons.

By that time I had just bought a tiny little wacom tablet, a wacom bamboo, the software bundled with it was horrible, and the system preferences icon was hideous.

So I did my first icon.

tablet-aqua

tablet-aqua

tablet-leopard

tablet-leopard

tablet-off

tablet-off

Nowadays i really don’t like it, but hey… it all started there!

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


Well, it really depends, sometimes I have a really clever idea in my head about what i’m about to start designing, sometimes i don’t, when i don’t, i try to sketch, search a lot for reference images of that object / concept so i can be sure i understand it all around enough to design it.

Where do you find inspiration?

That’s tricky! But honestly my biggest inspiration is always the artists i learned with and from. Laurent Baumann, Jonas Rask, Susumu Yoshida, Philipp Antoni, Henri Liriani, David Lanham…  you can only do better when you see better. they always push me to do better :)

Has Mac OS  changed the way you design / work? (if you use Mac OS)

Totally, it all started with it, the system really push you to be great, on anything you might do with it :)


Which apps do you use most to create your works?

Just Adobe Photoshop.

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

Not a favourite one, but one that I really enjoyed doing was the cake icon!

cake

cake

It was really hard at that time, i wasnt very skillfull yet, so i had to research a lot to be able to finish it.

Can you please describe us your workstation?

Very simple! a 20’ iMac a nice mouse and pen and paper, the workstation is not really the most important, it’s just a tool.

Can you tell something about your future releases?

Oh, fabulous things to come soon!



Thanks for chatting with us! Have a great Festival :)

Thank you! have fun ;)

Unlock More with Club MacStories

Founded in 2015, Club MacStories has delivered exclusive content every week for over six years.

In that time, members have enjoyed nearly 400 weekly and monthly newsletters packed with more of your favorite MacStories writing as well as Club-only podcasts, eBooks, discounts on apps, icons, and services. Join today, and you’ll get everything new that we publish every week, plus access to our entire archive of back issues and downloadable perks.

The Club expanded in 2021 with Club MacStories+ and Club Premier. Club MacStories+ members enjoy even more exclusive stories, a vibrant Discord community, a rotating roster of app discounts, and more. And, with Club Premier, you get everything we offer at every Club level plus an extended, ad-free version of our podcast AppStories that is delivered early each week in high-bitrate audio.

Choose the Club plan that’s right for you:

  • Club MacStories: Weekly and monthly newsletters via email and the web that are brimming with app collections, tips, automation workflows, longform writing, a Club-only podcast, periodic giveaways, and more;
  • Club MacStories+: Everything that Club MacStories offers, plus exclusive content like Federico’s Automation Academy and John’s Macintosh Desktop Experience, a powerful web app for searching and exploring over 6 years of content and creating custom RSS feeds of Club content, an active Discord community, and a rotating collection of discounts, and more;
  • Club Premier: Everything in from our other plans and AppStories+, an extended version of our flagship podcast that’s delivered early, ad-free, and in high-bitrate audio.