I’ve said it before, but it’s unlikely that that’ll ever stop me from repeating myself: the internet is a fascinating place. It allows seemingly distant personalities to connect on a similar plane in real-time, and creates cohesive communities among those both like-minded and not. Although there are hundreds of examples of this very phenomenon, and I, as longstanding browser, have participated in my fair (and unhealthily numerous) share of them. Recently however, I have found myself entranced by a community called MacThemes.
MacThemes has served as a home to some of the many Apple enthusiasts out there since it’s founding more than four years ago, and while there are literally dozens of sites out there for Mac fanatics, MacThemes remains decidedly different. For it is this website, this community, that some of the most talented and established graphic designers call their home.
MacThemes is, of course, beautifully designed, a graphic showcase on it’s front page, a themes page (devoted to improving the already pristine Mac operating system interface), a graphic design reference, etc. All of these are useful in their own right, but the truly interesting section of the site is buried in the waist of the navigation menu at the top of the screen – the forum.
For it is here that the true beauty of Mac culture and aesthetics shines so brightly. Although far from all of the forum participants are graphic design gods (far from it in my particular case), it is the warm and supportive culture of the forums that seems to breed constructive criticism, continual enthusiasm, and most of all, true, honest support.
I should pause here and provide some perspective. Since I was a child, I’ve been building, fixing, and explaining computers to those around me. For some reason I’ve been blessed with a particularly persistent plague of technological curiosity, and those who happen to receive my help seem to marvel at my abundance of random computer knowledge. I believe that now is the time to come clean. Everything I know about technology, all of the different ways I’ve fixed that annoying bug on your computer, all of it – I owe to the forums (and their respective communities) that I have found online. Forums are the reason that you, I, or anyone else can Google an error message and find not one but thousands of solutions, each posted key by key, letter by letter, by some helpful person from somewhere in the world. Google is a powerful powerful tool, but without the content of forum participants – it’d be useless.
Let’s get back to Macthemes. In order to understand the forums, one needs to understand a bit about the so called “Delicious Generation.”
If the Mac world had a Hollywood, then Phill Ryu and his fellow talent-drenched compatriots would be the first picks at the next Shawshank Redemption. They’re gifted, hard working, and most importantly (and fascinatingly, and consistantly) innovative. This group of individuals, usually lead by Ryu himself, are the masterminds behind MacThemes. They, above all, aim to make beautiful interfaces, whether it be online, on Macs, or on iPhones. While not all of their projects are huge successes (see MyDreamApp, which was a whole lot of hype and almost no results), they are always done with quality, thought, and unparalleled attention to detail.
It is only logical therefore, that In 2004, Ryu founded MacThemes, forum and all, with a mission to “fix things to make the world slightly prettier.” I’m not sure if this mission is meant as a less-than-subtle understatement, but the superficiality of it pales in comparison to the vast amount of unverbalized goals behind MacThemes.
While there are many examples of support, tutorials, feedback, contribution, cooperation, and compassion peppered throughout the MacThemes forums, none compare to what recently transpired: one of the staff members decided that it would be an interesting exersize in community building and holiday spirit to have a Secret Santa gift exchange. The gift would, like the best gifts out there, only have sentimental value: an avatar. For those that don’t know what an avatar is, I’ll explain. Each post on a typical forum contains several standard items: the post content, the member’s name who wrote it, and a small image by which that member has chosen to represent themselves. On a forum dedicated to beautiful graphic design, you can only imagine the levels of creativity and quality that some of these avatars reach.
With this in mind, and since most Macthemes members do not know anything about each other except what they’ve each contributed to the forum, each interested member was asked to post in the Secret Santa thread two simple things: the words “count me in,” and a short paragraph describing themselves, their interests, etc. With this information, each of the participants would randomly be assigned another particpant, for whom they would have to design an avatar that represented that person (based on their posted paragraph). People would have a week to sign up, and until December 22nd to submit their gifts.
As it turns out, sixty four members chose to participate in the gift exchange. Now I’m not sure what the number of regularly active MacThemes members is, but I know that it is quite difficult to get 3 people to do anything, nevermind 61 more. But, like I said, MacThemes is no ordinary place.
Being a newfound (and completely lost) amateur icon maker, I decided very quickly to participate in this peculiar holiday exersize. So I posted in the thread the following words:
I am currently a PhD student researching Public Policy & Structural Engineering, specifically repair of post-earthquake highway bridges. In my spare time, I own an IT services company that specializes in web & graphic design, web hosting, and Mac support. I’m absolutely obsessed with music (mostly), as you can see from my last.fm profile. Hope that helps!
I’d rather not disclose my name, but I love Macs and beautiful user interfaces (and long walks on the beach too, but that’s a different story…). I’m a huge geek, and a Cocoa developer, and I read way too much (especially scifi books and funny articles, they consume 90% of my time!). I dislike most sports, listen to rock music (Linkin Park, Disturbed, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.), live in NYC, hate following fads, and in great need of a nice avatar.
About a week later, all of the gifts were collected and began to be posted, beside the names of the creator and the recipient. My Secret Santa turned out to be a MacThemes staff member called Mac Guru, who created the avatar on the right for me.
The mark of true talent is being able to create something which the recipient didn’t even realize he represented. In the case of this avatar, my first glance at it invoked a smile from ear to ear, for here was an icon which fit perfectly into my About Me page of my new website, and the original author had no idea that I had designed, no more than two weeks prior, the icons on that page which are in the exact same vein as this one.
Missing from the ones I designed is of course is only my love of music. Unbelievable.
