Louie Mantia, an icon and interface designer, writes about app icons, skeuomorphism, icon sizes, and Apple design.
Commenters describe him as a designer of gorgeous iPhone icons, and cite his post on why resolution-independent assets do not work.
"save us from the unnecessary skeuomorphism"
People get stuck on the word 'skeuomorphism' here but the key word is 'unnecessary':
Find My Friends is often condemned for being too skeuomorphic. Mythbusted: Find My Friends uses standard iOS UI that is themed using custom graphics. The fine corinthian leather and stitching does not harken back to a day of fine corinthian leather products we used to use to find our friends. There is no connection to real world objects by using these materials.
http://mantia.me/blog/skeuomorphism/
I was lucky enough to get Louie Mantia (http://mantia.me/) before he left Tapulous for Icon Factory - I got charged about $900 for 4 icons (He now charges $1000 per icon due to a non-compete).
I can also recommend Emanuel Sa (http://www.emanuelsa.com/) - He's WAY cheaper and just as good.
Also I'd say David Lanham (http://dlanham.com/) & Fernando Lins (http://www.devixdesign.com/) are among the best as well.
I like a good piss take, and this is one of those. We could argue about all the features he included/left out, but its a job well done :)
Looks like its done by an Apple fan : http://twitter.com/mantia
Not a bad designer / star trek fan : http://mantia.me/
Am sure some Microsoft retaliations are in the works already :)
I'm also pretty sure the background on their page is Louie Mantia's work as well. It's an older version that he's since replaced, but you can see it on this site: http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/details/1236/blueprint.html
FWIW, the current version (Blueprint Neue) is here: http://mantia.me/wallpaper/blueprint/
I would say this a good example of them being closed and not appearing to care what their customers think:
http://mantia.me/blog/macbook-pro-thousands-of-colors
And, showing this isn't a one-time thing:
http://www.betanews.com/article/Apple-Sued-Over-MacBook-Display-Quality/1179519795
There's a friend of a friend of mine who creates some really gorgeous icons for iPhone: http://mantia.me/
He works at iconfactory (http://iconfactory.com), and their icons in general are really delicious, although probably not cheap.