Most of you should know by now that there is a nice and steady flow of gorgeous freeware icons coming from the iconfactory. But this is extraordinary: David Lanham, iconfactory employee and already one of my favorite icon artists, created a new system replacement set for Mac OS X, the crown of all icon artistry. It titled Agua and became my new default system set in seconds.

It's style is not too far away from the original Apple icons (which is a good thing), but it has a little bit more detail, bright colors and tiny hint of hand-drawn-yness.

Let me highlight just two great things about it:

First, the default folder is one of the best I've seen yet. This is the most important icon in my opinion, because you will see it more often than any other icon in the set. But it not only looks good, but Mr Lanham had the great idea to implement different designs for large and small sizes of the icon. In Mac OS X, there are four different images in every icon: One for 16×16 pixels, one for 32×32, one for 48×48 and one for 128×128 pixels. All the sizes in between are rendered from the next bigger image. In the Agua folder, there is a nice 3D folder for sizes bigger than 32×32, when there is enough room for 3D. But for 32×32 and below, the folder is lying flat on the surface, which makes it much easier on the eyes in list views.

Second, please have a look at the Trashcan. It's translucent plastic and if it is filled, you can see the waste inside slightly blurred because of the scattered surface of the bin. Hmmmm!

I used Agua for some days now, it works great in everyday OS working conditions. If the shots caught your interest, go ahead and download it. And while you're at it, check David Lanhams website and his illustrative work. (Sheesh, look at this!!!)

Speculation ahead: I bet Apple will hire Lanham before 2006 is over.