CRCustomization

(This is another repost of an Interview I did with LukasKokoska September 2018)

QUESTIONS/ANSWERS

Q: Let's start with an intro, for those that may not know you... could you give us a little biography?
A: Sure. As you can see from my nickname, my name is Lukas. I’ve been here on Deviant Art for quite some time(10 years), ever since I began to learn basics of user interfaces and how to create them. Currently working as UX Designer at a large company (I work mostly on smartphone products) and in my free time continue to dabble a bit in customization, although I am not as active as I used to be.

Q: Let's talk about your work. When did you start to design?
A: I honestly don’t remember anymore. I know it was a long time ago, when classic Winamp skins ruled the world of customization and ICQ was still popular form of communication. Back when internet was a more free place and no one was thinking about privacy policies. I started as everyone I guess, learning from tutorials and online courses until I could look at interface and go step by step in my head how I would create it. However, if you ask me when did my designs start to make sense (from hindsight), I guess about 5 years ago.



Q: What tools do you use? Also any recommendations?
A: So this varies by project and platform, it’s hard for me to pinpoint just few. I would say the usual UX design tools like Sketch, Adobe and Figma are the most common. I also use Principle if I want to do a quick prototype or animation at work and we extensively use Zeplin and Invision as well. Few months back when trying out few linux desktop environments I worked with Gravit Designer, Inkscape and GIMP too. You don’t really need most of these to customize OS interface, but they are solid building blocks to know if this is your hobby and you’re interested in it as a career. Pick one that suits you, but don’t hesitate to explore the others. One thing I would really recommend when designing interface though, is to stick to vector editors. You really don’t want to remake the same bitmap graphics for 8 screen densities when you can mass export them all at once from a vector editor.

Q: That makes sense for sure.  Where does your inspiration come from?
A: As far as themes go, it’s always a combination of few things. I sometimes dissect work of those who came before me, where they put little details and why. It’s also branding and design systems, trying to find interesting foundation of elements and ideas bigger designs are built upon, like interesting color combination, funky contrast and type or certain shapes. Finally, from experiencing collabs with different people. I always found collaborations to be the most exciting thing in customization scene and what kept it together. It just makes things more fun, you finish them faster and have the time to make them more complete and explore different ideas at the same time.



Q: The more the merrier!  Who are your favourite designers/customizers on deviantART. Could you name a few?
A: My favorite was Jamie for sure, just because we did lots of collabs together, kept in touch and always exchanged ideas. But instead of just mentioning key few I would like to mention as much as I can because maybe some of the readers don’t know their work, and well.. why not : cathycatchy, ether, Danlosant, burnsplayguitar, allannyholm, Nittiyh, rissol, imrik, mangosango, novoo, juiceboxxxxxx, nitzua, fate0000, akka, heylove, j3concepts, nuuvo, Bernardinho, Th0max, ninjaboi, theconcept, UAC-Marine, k1netx, kowoolo, Maximhuz, krissirk, lassekongo83, senex, niivu, requestedRerun, nosphere, reb70, Kalamity, ahlberg, aMADme, andredk, DijaySazon, asuraci, tostamistica, Kishan-Bagaria, Mr-Blade, nanu08 and more..

Q: That's a great list and shout out to some amazing people!  Could you please describe what kind of influence deviantART has had on you so far?
A: I guess the most important thing for me is the fact that I found many talented people and had the chance to collaborate with them on different themes and skins.



Q: Any advice for those that are starting to create their own designs?
A: Don’t be lazy. Be open minded and always learn. Talk to others.

Q: Good advice.  Do you have any work in progress?
A: Yes. But the form has not taken it’s shape yet.

Q: Can't wait to see it!  Any final words to add?
A:

CONCLUSION
Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview.  Can't wait to see what you create next.  Be sure to check out his amazing gallery! LukasKokoska

(This is a repost of an Interview I did with dpcdpc11 September 2018)

QUESTIONS/ANSWERS

Q: Let's start with the introduction, for those that may not have heard about you... could you give us a little biography?

A: Sure thing. For those who don’t know me they should know that I was born a long, long time ago in galaxy far, far away, one called Romania to be exact, where communism was the norm and our supreme leader was the reason we all came into existence. But to his misfortune in 1989 he accidentally died by the hands of the shooting platoon on the holiest of days of the year, that’s right, Christmas day. Guess someone up there didn’t like him that much, and when I say up there, I mean the Russian leaders of that time.  Fast-forward about 3 decades to our present days and I keep wondering “What the heck am I still doing here?” and then I remembered that I’m an awesome graphic designer and a great web developer (at least that’s what my girlfriend says) and the world is filled with opportunities and all that crap and best of all… I make Windows Themes so that other PC users can enjoy using their machines once again. Talking about making a difference, right!?

Q: For sure!  Now where did your nickname come from?

A: Now this is a tough one you see… because you might think “dpcdpc11” is the name of a Norse god or something, and who can blame you considering such a cool nickname (sarcasm here… a lot of it), but the sad truth is that these are just my initials spelled twice followed by the double 11. Pretty creative ha? Well what do you expect from such an awesome graphic designer

Q: Please tell us about your work. When did you start to design?

A: I guess I’ve always felt like a designer. As a kid growing up with just a few communist gray toys I used to come up with all kind of little games using my imagination and mundane object around to house to play with. So when I got my first computer in 1998 I knew I had to do something creative with it, after a few years of gaming of course, after all I needed to get used to the little devil first, right? Remember this was the time when gaming and PC magazines all included at least a CD filled with goodies like software, games, ebooks etc. And so among many interesting things (like Winamp, Sonique, DLH, WhereIsIt, Windows Commander etc.) I’ve stumbled upon PaintShop Pro. Oh man, the excitement, having the possibility manipulate images and draw on top of them… it was like magic!  I continued playing around with PSP until I’ve seen Photoshop in one of the PC magazine so I had to get my hands on it. And so I did (ordered a cracked version from an online friend… but please don’t tell anyone).  Using this wonderful new tool I’ve started tweaking a few Winamp themes and shortly after began playing around with Fireworks and Dreamweaver entering the wonderful world of web design.  But it wasn’t until the summer of 2010 that I’ve started working on Windows Themes, first by fixing and modifying an existing theme then making my own from scratch.

Q: What tools do you use? Also any recommendations?

A: I used to use Photoshop as my main tool but a few month ago I’ve switched to Affinity Designer because of the ability to combine and render nicely vectors and bitmaps at the same time plus AD has a very powerful export feature which helps a lot with the design process. So I highly recommend it especially since it’s only $50 which is a onetime payment unlike the monthly fee of the Adobe products.

Q: That's great.  Where does your inspiration come from?

A: Since most of my themes are oriented towards productivity without using flashy distractions, I usually study other operating system UIs which have the same goal. Of course the obvious ones here are macOS, Ubuntu and Linux Mint which are all very well crafted to get out of your way but still be able to enjoy your OS, unlike the recent direction of the Windows UI which looks boring and many times in your way.

Q: Who are your favourite designers on deviantART. Could you name a few?

A: Now this is not going to be a short list and hopefully I didn’t leave too many out. So in no particular order: K-Johnson, Aaron-A-Arts, kAtz93, krissirk, AlexandrePh, minhtrimatrix, zainadeel, givesnofuck, SolMiler, nardoxic, burnsplayguitar, emey87, imrik, Kishan-Bagaria (software designer) and last but not least our friend which is no more neiio. But luckily someone, who’s becoming fast one of my favorite themers (wink, wink) has taken Jamie’s legacy moving it forward. Thanks niivu!

Q: That's an impressive list,  thanks so much for including me!  Could you please describe what kind of influence deviatART has had on you?

A: Oh man… I’ve seen a lot of stuff over the years here on this wonderful place called deviantArt and boy, some of the people here really are deviants, which is a good thing! So in a way it taught me to see the world through other people’s eyes and taking a different perspective on many things.

Q: Do you have advice for those that are starting to create their own designs?

A: Yeah, sure… Before starting making something I would suggest to grab a book on the fundamentals of graphic design then read a bunch of articles on user experience design because after all design is not art. Design has purpose and comes into play to answer questions while art is there to ask even more questions. Of course it’s always nice to mix design and art to ultimately create not just functional design but also beautiful design.
Then after you have a grasp of the fundamentals go ahead and try to deconstruct your favorite masterpieces. Ask yourself why they work? Why are they beautiful? What about them makes your eyes pop? Then try and reproduce them so you can better understand the designer’s intention and purpose.  Of course you can experiment with your own stuff in the meantime which will give you even more experience and understanding.  And of course never be afraid to try new things even if they sound crazy at first. You can only fail that much and with every failure you’ll learn what doesn’t work and you’ll be closer to the success.

Q: Do you have any work in progress?

A: I always like to keep something in progress and right now I’m close to finish another color variation of my Maverick 10 Theme series for Windows 10. This one is called Maverick 10 Aubergine and is inspired from the Ubuntu color palette. Hopefully people will like it as much as my other themes.

Q: Any final words to add?

A: Final words are always the hardest as they are… you know… so final I would just like to thank all my fans that supported and used my work over the years. Hopefully I was able to inspire some while others have inspired me. Keep watching me and you won’t be disappointed!

CONCLUSION
I'm sure they won't be!  Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview.  We all look forward to more awesome creations by you!  Be sure to check out his amazing gallery! dpcdpc11

The process is simple, and there are hundreds of icon sets we can explore and implement.  There are drawbacks to this of course, such as missing icons, finding the right icon for what since there can be well over a thousand icons per pack to search through.  Anyway without further delay here we go!

Google is going to be our friend as it is for so many things.  The main thing we'll be searching for is APK or Android Package file packs.  They are how Android distributes it's applications.  In those files will be the coveted images we can use for docks and such.  They will come in the pack as .PNG files which will make it easy to extract and search for using Windows Explorer.  The most common dimensions for the .PNG images is 192x192.  Ideal for most dock applications.

You will need to use Google or whatever search you prefer to find a way to get the APK file for the relevant Icon Pack you are searching for.  Google is indeed our friend in this regard and you should easily be able to locate the solution for downloading the APK file.

Once you have the necessary  file you can use 7zip to extract it to a folder.  Once that's done open the folder in Windows Explorer and do a search for the .png files extension.  This may take a few seconds to complete as there are generally many icons located in each pack.  Once finished the search all the .png files of the APK package should be visible.  You can then select them all and move them to another folder location where you can browse through all the icons you wish to use or keep.

There you have it!  Android Icons on Windows!  Now how to implement them?  Choose your favorite dock software, I highly recommend Nexus Ultimate.  If you like you can also convert the .png files to icons for mac or Windows, however beware that as mentioned the Icon size is generally limited to 192x192.  If you have further inquiries let me know.  Please no sharing or links or APK files with others though as they are generally paid resources!  Support the authors by purchasing them (APK packs)  That way you can also usually have a say in icon requests for missing applications as well.

Hope this will help guide you in the right direction!  Happy customizing!  Share with me the names of some of your favorite icon packs in the comments.