Podcast Awesome

Icon Designer Jory Raphael Discusses Design Highlights of Font Awesome 6 on Podcast AwesomeSummaryHost Matt Johnson and Font Awesome’s Co-founder Travis Chase chat with icon designer Jory Raphael about the highlights of Font Awesome 6, and what differentiates V6 from V5. As Jory explains, when he joined Font Awesome, they had the opportunity to refine the icon set holistically and set some rules to make it better than ever. Jory also discusses how moving to Figma helped refine the Sharp icon family and recounts his experience collaborating with the United Nations on Humanitarian Icons. Finally, Jory and Travis discuss their favorite icons from the 6.1 release. ------------------------Timestamps0:00:10Exploring the Highlights of Font Awesome 6 with Senior Icon Designer Jory Rafael0:02:30Rebuilding Icons for Font Awesome 60:04:01Exploring Different Icon Styles for Branding and Design Projects0:06:30Exploring Icon Design 0:13:39Introducing Noah Jacobus, Font Awesome's New Icon Designer0:14:36Jory and Travis Discuss Their Favorite Icons------------------LinksFont Awesome 6 Is Live! See the New Icons, Styles and Upgrade Without the Hassle10 Reasons We Switched to Figma For Icon DesignFont Awesome and OCHA Partner to Create Humanitarian IconsNerd Show and Tell: Meet Noah Jacobus, Icon Designer ExtraordinaireRonnie Martin composed the Font Awesome theme songZach Malm composed the 8-bit styled music segues Audio mastering by Chris Enns and Lemon Productions ----------------Highlights "...Over the years, like, I have followed a lot of people who are fantastic artists and are sharing their icons. And Noah Jacobus is one of those icon designers who his work just constantly has made me jealous. He posts things that I wish I had designed and his skill and detail and creativity I find amazing. We actually got him to work a little bit on some contract work for us a little while ago as kind of sneakily, get him excited working with us at Font. Awesome. He finally popped the question and he is here working with us. And I'm so excited because I'm excited because he's a better icon designer than I am. And so that means that our stuff is just going to get better, and it also means that I can focus on some other things as well at Font awesome.""... Part of the core of Font Awesome is to have fun with things. It makes it so much more interesting to include an icon like the Poo storm icon. That was a joke. I was designing a set of weather icons and a cloud icon has some very similar curves to an icon of Poop. And I was designing a cloud icon and it had a little lightning bolt. And so I just took the Poop icon and added a lightning bolt and it's resonated with a lot more people than I thought it would.""One of my favorites [icons] is the coffee being just a big coffee nerd. Just love putting that everywhere. I love all some of the little references to nerd things that we like, like our business time icons or our Poo Storm dumpster fire icons. I think those are quite fun. And even recently we had complete breakdown and investigation into the mullet icon."Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

Exploring Sharp Icon Design, Retro Gaming, and Visual Rhythm with Noah JacobusIn this inaugural episode of Nerd Show and Tell, host Matt Johnson interviews Font Awesome icon designer Noah Jacobus. They discuss Noah’s background in music education, how he became an icon design hobbyist, the monumental task of creating the Font Awesome Sharp family, and little bit about his love of handheld retro-styled games. Noah also explains how music history helped him discover the similarities between design and music through visual rhythm and hierarchy. -------------------------Timestamps0:00:08Exploring the Task of Creating Font Awesome Sharp Icon Family0:02:59Connecting Music and Visual Arts0:04:30Music and Visual Design0:10:07Icon Design and Working at Font Awesome0:12:32The Challenges of Creating Sharp Icons 0:16:56Retro Gaming Handhelds0:19:47Iconography and Retro Gaming---------------LinksAdd a Touch of Class with Font Awesome Sharp IconsNerd Show and Tell: Meet Noah Jacobus, Icon Designer ExtraordinairePlaydate (retro-styled handheld game) Ronnie Martin composed the Font Awesome theme songZach Malm composed the 8-bit styled music segues The song “Man is He Mega - GLBML” was composed by Geoffrey BurchAudio mastering by Chris Enns and Lemon Productions -------------------Highlights"It can only do some specific things very well. And so there's some very creative solutions for how to make interesting games for that. That's the same kind of thing that interests me a lot about iconography in that way is that emphasis on working within constraints. And I think that's kind of what drew me to retro gaming and kind of the resurrection of it as well and kind of the preservation of it, too, is like a kind of focus on that, working with what they had and really making cool stuff.""... The Playdate by Panic has been really cool to see in development and I was finally able to get one earlier this year. And kind of the emphasis that goes into especially when you're creating a new handheld like this. It's kind of inspired by the Game Boy and a lot of old things and kind of choosing which design constraints you want to embrace to kind of set it apart because the playdate is kind of a weird form factor and it has a black and white screen that doesn't have a backlight and it's got some very unique inputs on it. It has some of the stuff you might expect with buttons and stuff, but it also has an accelerometer in it and it has a crank on the side of it and other things like that that are really interesting of like these are some new innovative things. But there's still cool ways to foster creativity because it's not a little wonder handheld that can do everything.""So learning how to research well has yielded a ton of benefit for me in design. Especially interestingly, a lot of the studying more world music and ethno musicology specifically in like what sorts of aspects of music were important to different cultures at different times throughout history and taking some kernels of that stuff to look for into."Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

Reuniting And Strengthening Remote Team Relationships: The Story Behind Font Awesome's Biannual SnuggleThe Font Awesome Team has an event called the Snuggle, a biannual company Meetup. As the Font Awesome team lives in different locations and meets every other quarter, the name came about in an interesting way. Choosing a funny name was an attempt to lighten up the serious business of remote work. As a way to foster positive vibes and to keep the team connected, the Snuggle is based on the idea that the best remote work comes from in-person relationships and sharing nerdy interests. Listen to host Matt Johnson, Dave Gandy, Travis Chase, Rob Madole, and Mike Wilkerson chat about remote work and building a healthy company culture. Timestamps0:00:09Exploring the Origin and Purpose of Font Awesome's Biannual Company Meetup — The Snuggle0:02:31The Benefits and Trade-Offs of Remote Work: A Conversation with Principal Software Engineer Rob Madole0:05:23The Power of Humor: Exploring the Benefits of Fun Team Meetings at Font Awesome0:08:00Investing in Relationships: The Benefits of Snuggles 0:11:50Reuniting with Colleagues During the COVID-19 Pandemic0:13:36Late Night Hangouts and A Reflection on Brian's Delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies 0:15:15Making Up for Water Cooler Experiences 0:16:52Font Awesome: Balancing Remote and In-Office Work for Maximum ProductivityHighlights“So clearly, the Snuggle is about as serious as its name, and yet the effect is that it helps build goodwill and trust among the Font Awesome team so we can work together better. While the remote work versus in office work debate will likely continue, Font Awesome has found a way to make the best of both worlds. And once you start working remote, you may never want to go back to the office again.”“ So people come in on Sunday. So Sunday is a travel day, and then they fly back out on Friday. That's a travel day. So we've got four days in the middle there for the actual Snuggle. Two of the nights we have where we expect everybody to be there hanging out two of the nights, and we've got two nights that are in some ways, kind of like recovery nights.”“We make up for a lot of the water cooler stuff that we miss. We make up for those shared experiences on a daily basis. We try to make up for that a lot of that here and compare it. I'm so excited that we got together, that we got to get together right now.”“Sometimes we'll have a celebratory bottle of alcohol — of spirits and all these kind of little tiny things we do. We play DND games. We've had one that's been ongoing for, at this point, years. It only happens at the Snuggle. We each have DND characters that are special for just this Snuggle game. And, yeah, we do those things just purely fun. And it's just we're hanging out with friends at that point.”Notes: Remote Work: How We Snuggle Our Way to a Healthy Company CultureRonnie Martin composed the Font Awesome theme songZach Malm composed the 8-bit styled music segues Audio mastering by Chris Enns and Lemon Productions Meet the Font Awesome Team Through Our Nerd Show and Tell Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

The first episode of Podcast Awesome features host Matt Johnson talking with Jory Raphael about what's coming up in 2023, and gives listeners a taste of what they can expect in the first season. Podcast Awesome will feature "Nerd Shows and Tells," in which members of Font Awesome's team discuss the work they've done in recent sprints (referred to as "splits" in FA speak), as well as the company culture that stems from their semiannual company meetup, affectionately known as "the Snuggle". After feeling nervous at first, Matt was encouraged to take on the role as host of Podcast Awesome by Travis Chase. Matt has enjoyed learning to use the technology to put the podcast together and is also responsible for the media, social media, blogs, and web copy. In addition, Matt and Jory talk about the aforementioned bi-annual Snuggle, an event where the team can connect and have fun together doing nerdy activities like playing Dungeons and Dragons, and watching sci-fi shows and movies together — all activities that build trust and goodwill among the team.In the last Snuggle, Mike Wilkerson and Ed Emanuel developed a prototype for the Icon Wizard (in beta release now). Often, conversations during the Snuggle spark new ideas and lots of great work has come from several Snuggle times.Jory and Matt also discuss the 2022 year in review, which includes: The Launch of Font Awesome 6! How to Blast Your Boredom by Playing Space Awesome!Classing Up Your Project With Font Awesome Sharp Icons Shoelace Joins Font Awesome How to Wield Near Infinite Icon Magic With the Icon Wizard And more! --------------------------------Timestamps0:00:09Conversation between Matt Johnson and Jory Rafael on the Inaugural Episode of Podcast Awesome0:03:57Review of Font Awesome's 2022 Accomplishments and Plans for 20230:05:54The Benefits of Team Building Activities at Font Awesome0:11:25Exploring Nerdy Interests with Mike0:13:03Exploring Dungeons & Dragons, Nerd Show & Tell, and Traditional European Martial Arts0:17:45Conversation on Enjoying Hobbies and Passions0:19:05 Discussing the 2022 Roundup and Plans for 20230:20:46Font Awesome 6 Launch and Space Awesome0:25:16Exploring Space Awesome: How Ed learned VueJs 0:27:15Exploring Font Awesome's Icon Sets and Recent Releases0:31:54The Origins of Font Awesome's Icon Wizard Feature (it was originally called, "F.A.R.T.S")0:33:44Collaboration between Font Awesome and the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to Create Humanitarian Icons----------------------------Links: Ronnie Martin composed the Font Awesome theme songZach Malm composed the 8-bit styled music segues Audio mastering by Chris Enns and Lemon Productions Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

In early 2023, the makers of Font Awesome are launching a brand new podcast unsurprisingly called — wait for it — Podcast Awesome! In this podcast, we’ll be talking about icons, naturally. We’ll talk about how we think building healthy and sustainable workplaces is possible. We’ll also dive deep into the tech of how we build things. And, of course, we’ll nerd out along the way. I’m your host, Matt Johnson, and on Podcast Awesome, we’ll be talking about icons, design, tech, business, nerdery, and more with the members of the Font Awesome team. Subscribe to Podcast Awesome wherever you get your podcasts. Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!