I am quizzed all the time about the name, "what is an igloonaut?" or "where did the name igloonaut come from?".

It goes back quite a number of years. I can't remember exactly when I first used it, but I remember the day it all started quite clearly.

When I first began designing icons for the first Windows versions of Pastel, the limitations on size and colour were very restrictive, and there were very few tools available to actually do the design work. But I managed; the biggest challenge was making a 32x32 pixels with a maximum of 16 colours resemble some of the required accounting terms.

The developers and I were reviewing some of the icons when the CEO joined in. It eventually got to one of the trickier concepts, and he went off on a tangent about  exactly what imagery should appear in this little square of pixels.  I remember it was Inventory and he suggested rows of shelves containing boxes and a forklift truck moving the boxes around. As far as he was concerned that would work well, so he left.

I was horrified as I had no real idea as to how I could get it to work. One of the developers, Sean, said that I might as well make up an icon of an astronaut coming out of and igloo on one roller-skate, wearing a grass skirt, with a happily surprised look on his face and going “ta-da”. To cut a long story short, the resulting set of icons worked well with the exception of the “igloonaut” who we never really found a use for, until now that is...