A lot of yearly online recaps focus on the consumption and engagement we’ve had in a year, like what music we listened to. But I want to highlight what I’ve done this year, because I’m really, really proud of it.

2024 was the first full calendar year I’ve lived completely in Japan. I didn’t travel outside the country, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t have an itch to travel anywhere. I felt pretty content being exactly where I am with the life I have around me.

I started the year with a blog post—one of my most popular, I suspect—Make a Damn Website. This post resonated with several people and I’m really happy it did. My followup later in the year How to Make a Damn Website prompted people to actually do it, and I got several emails from those who did. I’m not just proud of myself for motivating anyone to do that, I’m also proud of those people for doing it. As a side note, I love receiving email. It’s awesome.

I wrote a lot of other blog posts, too—more this year than ever before. In fact, this is the 94th blog post I’ve made in 2024. Surprisingly, that doesn’t include blog posts that were for icon or wallpaper releases, sketchbook posts, or photo entries. These 94 posts were primarily for writing. This is a direct result of finally making a website for myself that I want to continue building. I’m really happy to have done that.

I made several new sections to my website, really fleshing it out. Photos, Sketchbook, Favorites, Media Art, Shop, Yellow Pages, Projects, Colophon, and Features.

I finally, meaningfully broke away from social media and have a clear idea of how I want to use it going forward, which is as syndication for my website. Now that I realize I have full control over my website, I just want to point people here instead of posting among the noise anywhere else. No one else writes for my blog, and there are no ads around my words. It’s just me and how I choose to express myself. For now, social media is a means to let everyone know there’s something new on my website and answer an occasional question.

I created 13 wallpapers this year. Some of them were updates to older wallpapers, in which case I redrew them almost entirely or gave them a significant upgrade in color or resolution. I’m particularly proud of Meditation, which resembles one of the save points in Star Wars: Jedi Survivor.

I drew over 450 downloadable macOS icons. That’s so much. For a couple years, I didn’t release any icons, and even when I had in previous years, it was usually only a few sets, setting aside when I worked at the Iconfactory and was doing that as part of my day job. But in January this year I just felt compelled to render out these cute train station clocks at Maihama and kept rolling with it.

Some sets were related to living in Japan, like Hamorebi, Tokyo Subway, Tokyo LED, Tokyo Tiles, and Nobori. Some were about Nintendo, like Super Mario Bros., Nintendo Controllers, and Marufuku Nintendo; or video-game-themed in general, like Famicom Tetris and PlayStation Controllers. Of course there were lots of Apple-related things, like iPod mini Drives, Volume 3 of Ive Drives, Forstall Folders (Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3), Finders Keepers (Halloween, Volume 1, and Volume 2), Infinite Loop, and iPod Socks. I can’t believe on Christmas Day I released two different icon sets, just because I was in such a groove. It felt great.

I really love making icons. It’s not just my job. But speaking of work, at Parakeet we made a bunch of really nice new app icons for our clients—with many more yet to be revealed. We drew beautiful logos for new products and companies, and—perhaps most importantly—we have a new portfolio website that is home-grown. Just like my personal site, it was made from scratch, ye olde way. I hand-coded it and I’m so proud that it has almost our entire portfolio on it, which includes over 5000 individual pieces. It took so much work but I am now so thrilled to be able to direct people to it, to specific projects, and even host some of our Just For Fun icons on it. I wrote all about making it in a blog post called Parakeet Portfolio. Luka continues to be the best person I can imagine working with, and I’m excited every day we get to do something new for a great client.

As for Junior, I continue to experiment with making new cards and games, but nothing to show yet. For Crown, I am working on an all-new website that aims to make showcasing my fonts significantly better and make purchasing licenses more direct. I’m also creating a new font with Ender, and I can’t wait to show you more.

All of this was in one year, and looking back at it, it’s a little hard for me to believe. There have been entire years in the past where it felt like I worked so hard but had nothing to show for it, but now I’m glad that usually only happens for just a day or two now. I feel such a strong urge to create and don’t find myself stuck as often anymore.

There’s still a few more days left in the year, so there’s a good chance there will be something else new, but in the meantime, there’s a fun, small thing I want to share with you for reading all the way to the end: my RSS feed is now also a podcast. A few people emailed me this year to say they liked when I narrated my posts and provided that audio, and I realized it was just a few extra lines of code to add to my XML file to make it compatible with podcast players. If I can easily do it, I’ll work on adding it to catalogues in the future. But as of now, you can manually add the same feed to your favorite podcast app and listen to any blog post that I’ve narrated so far.

I put links at the bottom of all my posts about donating or buying something from my shop because that really does help motivate me. Sending cash because you like what I do, because you smiled at an icon I made, or because you’ve used one of my wallpapers for the last 10 years—that money directly funds more of it. And buying a font, some t-shirts, or my playing cards does as much for you as it does for me. You get something pretty and nice, and I get to keep doing what I’m doing. Win / win.

Thank you for reading my blog this year, and—as always—feel free to reply via email.

If you like this, you can make a one-time donation, donate monthly, or buy something from my shop.