Premiere Symbian Themer Tehk 7

Folks as a special treat this Friday, Nokia Mobile Talk interviews the world renowned themer Tehk7, who has provided thousands of Nokia users around the globe with his well crafted and superbly gorgeous themes. I personally like to call him the “Virtuoso” because his themes are nothing more than a true work of art and as such are worthy of admiration. Among some of his most famous themes are Enterprise One, Prestige Glass,Touch Vista, and N86 Solace where two of the aforementioned made the list in 7 Beautiful Themes for your Nokia Smartphone. So today is an opportunity to meet the man behind a lot of themes that grace the screens of our phones. Without further ado, Tehk7

Tell us a little bit about your background and what lead you to start developing Symbian themes.

I have an unofficial background in arts – I never went to school for it, but I am attending a University for illustration this September. I have always loved graphic design and customization. Approximately 3 years ago, I purchased my first Nokia Smartphone – The N73. Once the appeal of the blue Nokia and green Stave themes wore off, I quickly downloaded Nokia’s Carbide Theming program and I have been making themes ever since – only personal themes though.

It was after March of this year that I became a serious themer. I had purchased an E71-2 (yay!), and like most, I quickly grew tired of the dull grey icons – very quickly. I was very intrigued by the Ovi style icons that came with the 5800xm model. There were a few themes floating around with these icons, but I became dissatisfied after discovering a large number of bugs.

I eventually got an Ovi icon set from a forum, thanks Sky!, and I began theming right away. However, a lot of the icons were incorrect, inconsistent, or missing. After failing to find the replacement icons on Google, I decided to make my own Ovi replicas.
I released a handful of themes on that forum, and the response I got was phenomenal. After that, I was hooked!

Can you explain how you use your own application for our readers? Any favorite practices?

I don’t think I use my applications any differently than any other person.
Favorite practices.. I have the standard practices of a detail obsessed perfectionist! “Align center”, rulers, grids, zoom to the max to see if the pixels align correctly, you name it. Hahaha.

Even though icons are small, I believe that if something is off, one can notice it immediately and think “Hmm.. something just doesn’t look right.” (Or maybe that’s just me?).

I would say the more you use an application, the comfortable you become. Through experimenting with various tools and effects you develop your own style. Your own personal methods to great efficiency and creativity. Once you develop your own style, you simply have to let your imagination go wild, and the rest will follow.

How much time did it take to develop your themes, as far as coding the actual application and what programming language was used.

I don’t actually do any coding. I use Nokia Carbide 3.3, well 3.4 now, which is pretty much a drag and drop application. All of my imagery is created and edited in Adobe Illustrator CS3. I try to avoid non-scalable images (.jpg/.bmp/.png) as much as possible because I believe that it hinders the quality of the theme. SVG’s all the way!

As for time, It takes a lot of time – especially icons and icon sets. My personal Seven icon set took me approximately 2.5-3 weeks to produce. I worked on them every day, literally, with whatever free time I had. I often feel a lot of pressure to release certain theme projects (great examples would be the N86 Solace theme and Enterprise One) because I know how many people around the world are waiting for them.
The images for the menus, indicators, calendar, etc… Do not take that long to produce. They simply require a lot of testing and tweaking to get the look just right.

Can you share for our reader what developing is on the horizon?

There are my BIO icons to look out for. Although these won’t be finished for a looonng time. I am planning to start my own forum/messaging board soon. There, I hope to share helpful theme/icon/logo/graphic making/designing tutorials! As well as the regular good ol’ forum discussion stuff about cellphones and such. Stay tuned for that!
As for themes, besides the stuff I promised to release?..

I haven’t made it yet, but I plan on making a tribute theme to Devin Townsend (a Canadian artist who played guitar for Steve Vai and was the founder of Strapping Young Lad) for his upcoming album “Ki”. So excited for it!

P.S. Yes, blueberry is coming! Hold your horses, heh.

What are your favorite Symbian applications? Can you list your top 5 and why and what’s your favorite theme?

Top 5.. nothing too special I guess, but..

1. Nokia Messaging (Free, for now, push services for your Nokia. “Its best bro..”) This should be a native app.

2. FreeTimeBox (Displays the time everywhere, its great and its freeware!) This should also.. be native..

3. FSCaller (The older version, I don’t like the interface of the new version) Again.. this should be native..

4. Opera Mini (The ultimate browser! Its speedy and efficient.. except a few script/image rendering bugs) Gasp! The first one on the list that shouldn’t be native.. or maybe it should! Haha

5. Free-iSMS (Great threaded SMS app. Wins over conversations.. Actually, I believe the perfect threaded sms app should be a combination of both) Threaded SMS messages should DEFINITELY be native. Dang you Nokia!

Are you joining the Symbian Foundation? And What are your thoughts on the future of the Symbian Foundation.

To be honest, I don’t know what the Symbian Foundation is. I quickly glazed over their website and it seems to be about OS/application development. I believe that it will be quite successful in the future. Perhaps a return of UIQ? Hehe, we’ll see

What advice can you give to new developers/themers?

Well, like everything else, there are those people who do things because because “Whatever, it’ll kill some time”, and there are those people who do things because they absolutely love it. To those who are serious about developing/theming, I say this:

Sure, imitation will get a few hundred downloads or so. However, you won’t necessarily evolve too much as an artist/themer/developer/whatever…  Plus, you’d upset the person you imitated.

How to be innovative.. It has been a thousand or so years since art was created, and I believe almost everything has been done. So to create something “new”, you have to adapt and combine ideas from all the popular mediums available (advertisements, logos, web layouts, program interfaces, movie poster designs, etc…). Be inspired by what you see, and put your own spin on it.
You can and should apply these principles to everything, not just theming/developing. Give it a try!

Best of luck!

Which Nokia phones have you used in the past?

My first Nokia phone was an ancient/semi-ancient N73. Then I moved onto the E61. I also had an iPhone (blasphemy!) and a Blackberry Bold. Both were sold after one month of ownership! Haha.

What are your 2 favorite Nokia Smartphone of all time and which Nokia are looking forward to use.

My 2 favorite Nokia Smartphone’s would be the E71-2 and the N95 8GB. The E71-2 is a sleek and stylish business qwerty that is built with supreme quality and attention to detail. The design etched into the back of every E71 battery plate is fantastic! Although I have never used the N95 8GB, it is a stylish all-black dual-slider with a massive 2.8 inch screen.

Looking past the aesthetics, both devices are workhorses. With enough processing power, RAM, and storage capability to handle almost anything – anything Symbian based of course and I’m looking forward to use.. I guess, I’m with just about everyone on this one.. The N97!

And finally on a more personal note what is your favorite color, movie, music band, and sport?

Color.. does Black count? How’s about white? Grey?.. I guess not. Well, I don’t have a favorite “color”, but I do have favorite color combinations. My favorite color combinations would be blue and orange (this can be seen in my Prestige Solace, a.k.a. N86 Solace, theme), purple and yellow, and white/black and lime green

I watch movies, but I’m not a huge movie fan. My favorite movie genre would definitely be comedy. As for favorite movie.. Probably Adam Sandler’s Waterboy. It was after seeing the Waterboy, I had learned that “Ben Franklin’s was the devil!”

I am a huge music fan. I am actually a musician – an amateur musician. My two favorite main genres of music are classical and progressive. Classical then stems to opera and new age, and progressive steams to metal – where all the dark and evil stuff are. Yes, from Bach to Bodom, from Enya to Opeth – Gotta love the balance.

I actually play a guitar – it’s a 7 string Ibanez 7620 if anyone is curious. After I picked up a seven string guitar, I fell in love it it, and 7 became my favorite number. Thus.. tehkSeven, heh.

Sports.. to be honest, I’m not into sports. Yes.. very girly man. I make myself feel better by participating in power lifting and bodybuilding. I hope that compensates for my lack of interest for football and the like? Haha.

Thanks for interviewing me!

It was my pleasure !

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