 | |
| Industry | Graphic design,software |
|---|---|
| Founded | April 1996 (1996-04) |
| Owner | Corey Marion,Talos Tsui, andGedeon Maheux |
| Website | www |
The Iconfactory is asoftware and graphic design company that designs commercial icons anduser interfaces and publishes desktop applications andmobile apps formacOS andiOS.
The Iconfactory was founded in April 1996 by three artists: Corey Marion, Talos Tsui, and Gedeon Maheux.[1] Craig Hockenberry joined the company in 1997 as the lead engineer and Dave Brasgalla joined in January 1999. The company incorporated in January 2000. The Iconfactory gained popularity through the creation of packages of free icons for download.
From 1997 until 2004, the Iconfactory held an annual icon design contest for theMacintosh icon community called Pixelpalooza. The competition was a chance for artists to design and produce original icon creations for the chance of winning software and hardware prizes. Pixelpalooza was discontinued in 2005 and is now "on hiatus for an indefinite time."[2]
The Iconfactory created over 100 icons forMicrosoft to be included in theWindows XP[3]operating system. They also created the base icons inWindows Vista'sAero interface.[4] In 2004, they created over 100 icons for theXbox 360user interface and website.[5]
In 2007, the Iconfactory developedTwitterrific for macOS andiOS. The company also created the video gameFrenzic for macOS, which they also released for iOS andDSiWare; a sequel titledFrenzic: Overtime was released forApple Arcade.
In 2025, the Iconfactory launchedTapestry for iOS andiPadOS, an app that integrates feeds from Bluesky, Mastodon, RSS, YouTube, and more into a unified timeline.[6]
On May 31, 2011,Lodsys asserted two of its four patents: U.S. Patent No. 7,620,565 ("the '565 patent") on a "customer-based design module" and U.S. Patent No. 7,222,078 ("the '078 patent") on "Methods and Systems for Gathering Information from Units of a Commodity Across a Network." against Iconfactory and 6 other developers for using Apple's API for in-app purchases. Apple responded by stating Apple's licenses protect its app developers.[7]