BY Whitney Goodell, POSTED 30, August 2010 
I went to Lugano, Switz this weekend and Valley of Versazce. I think it was my favorite place I have ever traveled to; and I have been to a lot of places. I have really awesome pictures to post late this week, so check back every day :)
You can read the full post on Whitney’s Blog: Whitney’s Blog
BY Whitney Goodell, POSTED 26, August 2010 
So you can rent cows here. RENT COWS. I really want to. You have to spend 4 hours a day with the cow you rent, and you get all the milk and cheese from it. So.. basically I would have to wake up at like 4 am with the farmers, and then get to work at 8ish like usual. Sounds legit to me!
You can read the full post on Whitney’s Blog: Whitney’s Blog
BY Marcia Hoang, POSTED 15, August 2010 The Zurich Street Parade is pretty much a huge techno dance party. With over 30 floats and 100 dj’s with several stages set up, the party never stops. Whitney, Karen, and I all slept in Saturday morning, had lunch, before heading to Zurich which is only an hour and a half train ride away. The music was definitely not what most Americans listen to but the people looked great and loved having their photo taken! Here’s a little taste of who I saw yesterday.
You can read the full post on Marica’s Blog: switzerla di da
BY Nicolas Baumann, POSTED 20, July 2010 Let’s talk (or rant) about web standards. I recently read an old but still relevant article about web standards it explains the different standpoints (idealist and realist) and reminded me about the issue I regularly face with cross-browser compatibility. I always cared about HTML and CSS standards such as proper semantics, not using deprecated tags or attributes and in general clean and organized code. But what I never really paid a 100% attention to was how my stuff displayed in all the different browsers, if it rendered properly in IE 8, Chrome and Firefox (if it displays properly in those 3, you’re generally good to go with the other browsers), I was happy. I could afford this because I knew my audience, in most cases my audience was gamers and they’re usually on the cutting edge of software and hardware, and if it wasn’t gamers, it was my TA, and I knew my stuff would be graded with Firefox.
There’s a point after which you simply need to stop providing support for old browsers such as IE6, it’s not worth the time, the pain and the money. I do still check how my website displays in IE6 (great tool to view your page in different browsers), but do I really do anything about it if it doesn’t display well or barely? Honestly, no. I’m not going to support a browser which was released in 2001 and has had no major update since, especially when there are new versions of the browser available. The furthest I’m willing to go is slap this piece of JavaScript in. It does a decent job and has helped me out many times in the past.
Internet Explorer seems to be catching up a little, IE8 does a good job and it seems that IE9 will have good support for HTML5 and CSS3. This will, however, not solve our problem. We’ll have 3 browsers which won’t support HTML5 and CSS3; IE6, IE7 and IE8. IE users are notorious for not upgrading their browser for whatever reason, and those 3 aforementioned browsers will probably hold 20% of the browser market share for a while even with IE9 on the block, it also doesn’t help that IE9 will not be compatible with Windows XP (60% of the OS market share). So what are web developers supposed to do?
This post is continued on nbaumann.com: http://bit.ly/cH5MSo
BY Marcia Hoang, POSTED 20, July 2010 This weekend I went to Bern with my coworkers. We got there Friday night and stayed at Nic’s house. He was gracious enough to barbecue for us but of course all he bought were ribs, sausages, chicken wings, sausages, corn, sausages, some bread, chips, and sausages. I had to throw in a bag of salad into the mix to make sure we weren’t completely off balance. You may notice in the picture below that Nic is half wet because he courageously stood in the rain to barbecue for us! Go Nic! I should have taken a picture of the bucket-o-meat but the guys attacked it before I realized that I should probably document this event. We did nibble in the green house while the rain died down as Nic was so kind to re-enact for you guys.
You can read the full post on Marica’s Blog: switzerla di da
BY Marcia Hoang, POSTED 04, July 2010 
This weekend was amazing! Lindsay (another design intern here) and I went to Zermatt early Saturday morning. It started off really rough though. Let me start back from Friday when I bought our tickets online to try to save some money. We were super excited because I found some really good deals. Then I purchased and printed them when I found out that I had bought 2 pairs of tickets going from Zermatt back home and none of the tickets were actually to Zermatt. So I told my boss Lori who said not to worry she would go down with us to straighten it out at the train station. When we got there with Lori and her husband Jon (the other boss), they said they could not do anything and Jon went off on them for poor customer service and the level of rudeness we were getting. I felt so bad that they were doing all this for me. At the end, we ended up buying another pair of tickets to get to Zermatt… meaning the super saver deal I tried to take advantage of online had been nullified. Great.
You can read the full post on Marica’s Blog: switzerla di da
BY Marcia Hoang, POSTED 23, June 2010 Today was my first full day here in Switzerland. I got the day off to adjust. Last night, I couldn’t really sleep all the way through. I kept waking up every hour or two since it would only be 5 pm in Houston. Plus there’s a church near here with a bell that rings every 30 minutes or so. Also, at like 7 am construction started and there was drilling right outside my window. But I was able to sleep off and on until 1 pm and then I showered and walked around the town. I found a really cute cafe and had a croissant and some tea. Walked around some more and took pictures. It is very hilly here so it was all down hill and then all up hill when I walked to the hotel. Makes for some good exercise.
You can read the full post on Marica’s Blog: switzerla di da
BY ICON, POSTED 10, May 2010 Talented, hard-working, smart, kind & fun! Alynn Ramoie worked with us in our Swiss office as a graphic designer and played a critical role on projects ranging from traditional print production, to website design, social media and iPhone app screen design. Able to comfortably cross these diverse mediums, she always managed to strike the right balance of classic design sensibility and new media aesthetic.
While at ICON she ran the fast-past retail University of St.Gallen business, including brochure & catalog design, website maintenance, and a newspaper campaign across the leading publications in the Swiss and German markets, including: the Neu Zurcher Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Financial Times, and many others.
She has real experience developing, and launching Social Media programs across Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as business blog design. For the University, she played a key role in the design of the iPhone app, one of the first for a European University. Her designs, were smart, elegant, approved, implemented and are sucessfull.
We all (dogs included) already miss her, but we know the right (this means you) agency in NY, will not pass up the opportunity to hire this talented young designer. (Did I mention: she’s from Michigan, loves Switzerland, speaks German, and knows how to make fondue???)
Her resume is here: Alynn Ramoie (PDF)
Her email is here: alynnramoie@gmail.com
And here is her portfolio:
BY Ro McKay, POSTED 20, April 2010 
Working at Icon has been a very valuable experience as a young Graphic Designer from the States.In my first week I had the opportunity to work on challenging projects in three languages for print, web and mobile devices.
Working directly with the client on the Social Media campaign for the St. Gallen MBA has taught me how important Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can play in supporting a clients business. Taking the program live and sharing the success with him (170 fans in 1 week) has given me a real practical case study in this new field. What is very rewarding as a designer is to find a solution to personalize and bring an identity to these sites that the public uses daily. For example, I have always been a fan of icon’s, so working to develop custom icon’s for the iPhone app, was great.
My timing at Icon is perfect; I am lucky to have come in at the same time to work with Karen from the New York office. I have learned a lot from her in a short amount of time, especially in Photoshop.
I have one month down with two more to go and I look forward to the design challenges ahead of me.
BY ICON, POSTED 04, February 2010 We know how tough it is these days for designers and developers entering the workforce to get good gigs. And we also believe that a tough job market shouldn’t discourage talent from pursuing their ambitions. Actually, it’s in the long term interest of the marketing industry to make sure that the best talent gets the support they need to stay in the industry and advance.
Although we want the ICON internship to be fun, and love to watch everyone enjoy the Appenzeller experience, we also do our best to put an emphasis on helping people develop new skills, and add international work to their portfolio as a way of setting themselves apart when they get home.
As this recent Chicago Tribune article points out, we agree, international internships indicate a level of confidence and a desire to work: Chicago Tribune
Follow our Interns: @ICONWorldwide/iconinterns
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