Recently I profiled the work of Ken Saunders and his ColorCons icon sets which are available for free from MouseRunner.com. Over the course of our correspondence, I asked Ken if he would be interested in doing an interview for MaxPower about his work. Ken was gracious enough to accept and I eagerly sent him some questions. Here are the results of the interview:

MaxPower - Who is Ken Saunders?
Ken: I’m a 38 year old, Legally Blind individual who has a passion for creating graphics and working on my websites. Legally Blind in the U.S. is one who has a visual acuity of 20/200 or worse. My left eye acuity is 20/400 or worse, and my right is 20/200 or worse. It is difficult to obtain an accurate acuity because of a congenital condition known as Ocular Albinism with Nystagmus.

I also spend a substantial amount of my time volunteering for Mozilla, the creators of the Firefox Web browser. My eye condition doesn’t really bother me because I would never have had the time to do what I do without the condition, so I’ve taken a negative and turned it into a positive.

MaxPower - Why did you start making icons?
Ken: I’ve always had a passion for graphical arts. I’ve created wallpapers, promotional materials, and the graphics on my sites. I always wanted to add a graphics section on my site but I needed content to do that, and I wanted original content that couldn’t be found anywhere else. So I started creating various symbols and shapes such as biohazard, radioactive, spheres and others to give away for others to use in their graphics projects.

Then I thought that some of them would make good icons or good icon templates and that’s when I started creating the icons that you see on the site.

MaxPower - Why publish these icons online?
Ken: I believe in a free Internet. What I do is purely for fun and not for profit. Internet users should have a place to get good free content and I’m trying to provide that, plus I really enjoy sharing what I’ve made. I’ve been to many sites that charge upwards to $400 for an icon set. I know that people have to make a living, but it’s ridiculous to charge so much for a small graphic that represents a folder on a computer, I’m trying to offset that.

I know of many artists on deviantART.com that produce gallery worthy pieces and they don’t charge a fraction of what some sites are requiring for icons. Between the cost of a P.C., an operating system, Internet connection fees and others, people are putting out enough money, they should get something for free.

MaxPower - What software do you use to make your icons?
Ken: Different ones for different portions of the graphic. I may use Photoshop to help out with layering (a Photoshop pro I’m not), I use an old Paint Shop Pro program for most of the icon backgrounds, templates and glossy effects. I also use an icon editing program for most of the symbols that are in the icons, and to convert the raw graphics into icon formats. And believe it or not, Firefox is a great and quick image viewer and you can use extensions for some editing purposes.

MaxPower - What makes a great icon?
Ken: Effort and time make a great icon, and the ability to see the icon in detail in different sizes. I haven’t quite mastered this yet, but I’m learning with each new project. People have different preferences as to what is visually appealing to them, so I also believe that creating a variety of different icons with different colors is important to creating good icons.

MaxPower - What is your favourite icon that you have created?
Ken: I don’t have a single favorite, until recently, ColorCons were my favorite, now it would be the current set (PrimaryCons) that I’m working on.

MaxPower - Are there any (graphic) artists that you take inspiration from?
Ken: Jamey Boje (AKA GraphicsGuru.com) has been a good, patient friend and mentor who is the most talented graphical artist that I’ve ever met. His works inspire me to create the best graphics that I am capable of. He is currently the Graphics Development administrator for SpreadFirefox.com.

MaxPower - There is some irony to being a Legally Blind graphics artist. What do you have to do differently then other artists in order to create your works?
Ken: Due to my visual condition, I can only focus on objects for very short periods of time. My eyes move in a rapid horizontal motion making it very difficult to visually stay focused on what I’m working on. So it can take quite a bit of time to complete a project.

For me, page zooming is the key, sometimes up to an individual pixel to see what I’m working on and to get the colors, shapes and alignment just right. Patience is another tool that is very important because if I get eye strain, than I must switch to another project or simply take a break. So I really don’t do anything differently than other graphical artists, it just takes more time to complete a project.

MaxPower - How does your work with icons relate to Access Firefox?
Ken: Access Firefox is still in its infancy and there is still a lot of work to be done on it. For the most part, with the display and explanation of some icons and graphics, I’ll be demonstrating that nearly anything can be accomplished by individuals with disabilities.

MaxPower - What is mouserunner all about?
Ken: The name Mouse Runner came after searching through about a hundred domain names, and I finally came up with this one to represent one who operates a computer mouse. The site started as a hobby out of New England winter boredom. It was at first a collection my personal favorite links to other sites. It made no sense to me to have visitors come to my site just to be referred to another. I knew that in order for visitors to stick around I’d have to add new and unique content that couldn’t be found anywhere else, so that is what I did.

Today, Mouserunner.com does offer content that can’t be found anywhere else that I’ve solely created myself. The site has gone from me being the only visitor to an average of 75,000 visitors per month. Despite the traffic, everything on the site remains free. I’m simply here to share what I’ve made, and people visiting and using the content is payment enough.

MaxPower - What are you working on now?
Ken: I’m finishing up on my next set of icons called PrimaryCons which includes many of the same symbols as ColorCons, but in my opinion, these are even better and there’s an additional 35 or so new ones. So instead of the 49 icons that you’ll find in ColorCons, this set will have more than 90 and it should be released after I convert the raw images into the proper icon formats, which will be any day now.