William Bart on Life, Omega, and Theming
For those new to the Mac customization scene, William Bart is one of the more interesting and controversial characters whose work you're likely to encounter. An accomplished commercial designer and illustrator by trade, his extensive BBX theme designs are widely considered to be some of the best non-commercial GUI work ever released. His attention to detail and overall sense of style are the kind of stuff that make enthusiast's heads spin and critics foam at the mouth. In fact, you're likely to see his influence in the work of many up-and-coming theme designers on both platforms, in commercial interfaces for everything from websites to video games and (as rumor has it) perhaps even within Aqua itself. Curved buttons, realistic glossy surfaces, translucency, directional lighting with drop shadows - all stuff William and others were doing with the OS9 utility Kaleidoscope long before Aqua was revealed.
Although he hasn't released anything for the Mac in over two years, he remains well-known and maintains a level of collaboration with today's most prolific and popular OSX theme developers. Max Rudberg, arguably the most well-known Mac OS X theme designer, has even ported William's BBX MERCURY™ Futuristic GUI Overlay Kit to the OS X platform. The precursor to the extensive 'skin suite' concept that's taken hold on the Windows platform recently, BBX Mercury was released way back in 2001 - yet still enjoys considerable popularity due in part to dozens of ports and adaptations for Windows (even PDAs and cell phones) in addition to the interpretation by Max. To say that it remains one of the most popular themes of all time is no exaggeration.
Posted by phillryu on December 29, 2003
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