Masters of the Small Canvas

Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s announcement this month that “the future of TV is apps” made designer Louie Mantia very happy. He and Alexa Grafera run Parakeet, a studio in Portland, Ore., that specializes in designing icons—the postage-stamp-size images that users tap or click to launch apps. On the new Apple TV, which the company demonstrated on Sept. 9, the animated 3D icons look much sexier than their tiny, static iPhone counterparts. “We are very excited about Apple TV,” says Mantia. For designers like him, the product’s home screen is a new canvas.

Ever since Susan Kare’s 8-bit designs graced the first Macintosh screens in 1984, icon design, like digital typography, has been an important if unglamorous niche in the software business. The 2008 debut of Apple’s App Store created “a sea change in our industry,” says Gedeon Maheux, co-founder of Iconfactory, a large design studio in Greensboro, N.C., that does work for big brands such as Windows and Twitter. “It gave us job security.”