Podcast Awesome

What do a scene from Silicon Valley, a typeface shaped like sausages, and a bottle of mustard have in common? They're all part of the origin story of Notdog, one of Font Awesome's small-batch Pro+ icon packs. It's glossy, it's gooey, and it is very much not a hot dog.

On this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Font Awesome designers Noah Jacobus and Jory Raphael to talk about how a challenge from Dave Gandy ("can we make an icon pack that looks like this?") turned into one of the first proofs that Pro+ packs could work at all. Noah explains why one simple rule about shine shaped every icon in the set, why his early emoji faces looked like dino nuggets, and how a pack inspired by tubes ended up looking like condiments. Plus: the actor who plays Milton in the Font Awesome marketing videos eats a lot of hot dogs on set, and we settle nothing about which regional hot dog is best.

What We Cover

• How a Silicon Valley gag and the Frankfurter typeface combined into Notdog
• Why every icon needed room for a highlight, and how that set the smallest possible shape
• The shift from tube-shaped strokes to blobby, condiment-style forms
• How Noah builds a test set of about 10 icons before committing to all 200
• Why Pro+ packs trade some legibility for personality, like a headline typeface
• The faces that fought back, and why the Duotone style is the one to use
• Notdog's starring role in the Font Awesome 7 video
• Chicago dogs, Seattle dogs, and the legendary $1.50 Costco hot dog

Timestamps
00:00 Not a hot dog
00:45 Welcome to Podcast Awesome
01:00 Jory lists his favorite hot dogs
02:00 Why is it called Notdog?
03:45 The Glyph book and the "could we even do this?" challenge
05:15 Mood boards and sausage balloon animals
06:45 From tubes to condiments
08:15 The shine rule
09:00 Building a brief: from 200 icons down to 10
11:15 Core Font Awesome vs. Pro+ personality
13:45 Where you'd actually use Notdog
16:15 The easy icons and the dino nugget faces
19:00 Why Duo is the Notdog to use
20:15 Diner art, Milton, and hot dog consumption on set
24:15 Notdog, Jelly, and Slab: the first Pro+ packs
27:15 The best regional hot dog? 
29:30 The $1.50 Costco hot dog legend
32:00 Wrap-up and credits

Links

• Explore the Notdog icon pack: https://fontawesome.com/icons/packs/notdog
• More episodes of Podcast Awesome: https://www.podcastawesome.com/

Credits
Hosted produced and edited by Matt Johnson
Guests: Noah Jacobus and Jory Raphael
Theme song by Ronnie Martin
Music interstitials by Zach Malm
Video editing by Isaac Chase

#FontAwesome #PodcastAwesome #IconDesign #GraphicDesign #DesignProcess #Typography

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Every company has a name for the week everybody flies in. The offsite. The summit. The all-hands. At Font Awesome, it's called the Snuggle. For real.

Recorded from a hotel room at the October 2026 Snuggle, this episode digs into the Podcast Awesome vault to tell the story behind the most ridiculous name in company meetups. Matt stitches together clips from Dave Gandy, Travis Chase, Rob Madole, Jory Raphael, Cory LaViska, Ed Emanuel, and Frances Botsford. Along the way you'll hear how four guys and a beach house on Cape Cod turned into a fully remote company that still flies everyone in, and what keeps coming out of that week together. 

What We Cover

• How the "Cape Cuddles" became the Snuggle, and why the name stuck 
• Rob Madole on the real tradeoff of remote work: focus is great, but coworkers can start to feel like a resource
• The Icon Wizard, a feature that got its start at a Snuggle
• Cory LaViska's whirlwind trip from a Twitter follow to a porch phone call to Arkansas, plus the "Snuggle Is Real" shirt
• How the Icon Wizard grew into something bigger, with Ed and Frances
• Snacktivities: bite-size projects you can only really build in person (and a feature name that, thankfully, got changed)
• What it felt like when COVID canceled the Snuggles
• Rob's change of heart, and why he stopped being annoyed
• Dave Gandy at the 2024 Snuggle, somewhere between karaoke and game night, on how loyalty gets built
• Why the ridiculous name has one great side effect

Timestamps

• 00:00 – Welcome to the Snuggle (yes, really)
• 01:10 – Cape Cuddles and the origin of the name
• 02:30 – Rob Madole on what remote work gives and what it costs
• 04:10 – The Icon Wizard's Snuggle roots
• 05:00 – Cory LaViska joins the crew
• 06:15 – "The Snuggle Is Real"
• 07:30 – Ed and Frances on pushing the Icon Wizard further
• 08:15 – Snacktivities explained
• 09:50 – When the Snuggles stopped
• 11:40 – Rob comes around
• 13:40 – The 2024 Snuggle with Dave Gandy
• 15:00 – How loyalty is built
• 15:20 – Back to the name
• 16:10 – Telling the story from the 2026 Snuggle
• 16:50 – Credits

Episodes Featured

• Remote Work: How We Snuggle Our Way to a Healthy Company Culture
• Font Awesome's 2022 Year in Review with Matt and Jory
• The Snuggle Is Real: How Font Awesome and Shoelace Are on a Mission to Make Dev Work Easier 
• New Font Awesome Features: PNG Downloads, Color Picker, and User Blender
• Character First: The Font Awesome Key to Hiring Success

Links

• Try the Icon Wizard
• More episodes of Podcast Awesome

Credits

• Hosted, produced, and edited by Matt Johnson
• Theme song by Ronnie Martin

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Would you take a shot at something you cared about if your odds of success were 1.4%? Font Awesome founders Dave Gandy and Travis Chase did exactly that when they applied to Y Combinator back in 2014. And in the years since, Font Awesome has racked up plenty of failures right alongside the wins. 'Cos that's just what happens when you're building something awesome.

In this episode, we go digging through Font Awesome's own flops (a product name that confused customers, a CDN experiment that converted exactly ONE person in three months) and line them up next to the real-life Museum of Failure. Which is hilariously an actual museum, started in Sweden in 2017, dedicated entirely to products that didn't make it. Expect Colgate's short-lived frozen dinners, a cologne no biker asked for, and the Nintendo Power Glove.

We also go back to a 2023 conversation with Dave Gandy about flunking out of MIT (twice), what it means to have the freedom to fail, and how a completely unprepped first Y Combinator interview turned into a second shot years later. And the second shot at YC was built on meticulous prep, a childhood friend's help at the Mountain View Public Library, and an unexpected connection with a YC partner.

The through-line: none of this looks like a success story on its own. But it's basically the only way Font Awesome got built.

What We Cover

• Font Awesome's own quarterly product failures: Fort Awesome and the Font Awesome CDN
• How a "failed" CDN experiment quietly built the email list that powered a record-breaking Kickstarter
• Dave Gandy on flunking out of MIT, twice
• A tour through the real-life Museum of Failure: Colgate Kitchen (and the lasagna that probably never existed), Harley-Davidson Cologne, and the Nintendo Power Glove
• Dave's first Y Combinator interview (zero prep) versus his second (a lot of prep, a library, and some serious spreadsheet work)
• Why humility, not confidence, is the trait Font Awesome hires for

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Would you take a 1.4% shot? Font Awesome's Y Combinator odds
• 00:03 — A quick tease: meet "Fort Awesome"
• 00:03 — Clip: Dave Gandy on startups, believing the lie, and finding your real limits
• 00:04 — The Fort Awesome experiment — and the name confusion that helped sink it
• 00:04 — Font Awesome CDN: a full quarter of work for one signup
• 00:05 — The quiet payoff: how that "failed" CDN built the email list behind the Kickstarter
• 00:06 — Dave on flunking out of MIT — twice
• 00:07 — Inside the Museum of Failure: Colgate Kitchen (and the lasagna that almost certainly never existed)
• 00:09 — Harley-Davidson Cologne: bikers said no thanks
• 00:10 — The Nintendo Power Glove — so bad it inspired a movie line, and still helped shape the Wii Remote
• 00:13 — Dave's first Y Combinator interview: no plan, no prep
• 00:13 — Round two: Ryan, the Mountain View Public Library, and the Adobe Typekit comps
• 00:15 — The Kevin Hale interview and finally clicking
• 00:17 — The real lesson: humility over hype
• 00:19 — Go make something awesome

Credits

• Produced, hosted, and edited by Matt Johnson
• Featuring Dave Gandy and Travis Chase
• Theme song by Ronnie Martin
• Music interstitials by Zach Malm
• Video editing by Isaac Chase

Links

• Font Awesome: https://fontawesome.com
• Podcast Awesome: https://www.podcastawesome.com
• When Failure Isn't Failure: Hard Lessons in Business and Life with Dave Gandy — Podcast Awesome (June 2023)

Museum of Failure

• Museum of Failure — official site
• Colgate Kitchen Entrees — exhibit page
• Harley-Davidson Perfume — exhibit page
• Nintendo Power Glove — exhibit page
• Museum of Failure — Wikipedia (background, Samuel West, tour history)

The "Colgate Lasagna" myth

• Ripley's Believe It or Not: The Truth Behind the "Failure" of Colgate Beef Lasagna
• Food Republic: Did Colgate Really Sell Frozen Lasagna in the '60s?

Y Combinator

• Y Combinator — official site
• Apply to YC

Adobe Typekit / Adobe Fonts

• Adobe Fonts — Wikipedia
• Typekit Blog: "Time for a change: Typekit has become Adobe Fonts"

Power Glove background

• Power Glove — Wikipedia
• Smithsonian/Lemelson: "Success Born of Failure: The Nintendo Power Glove"

#FontAwesome #PodcastAwesome #FailureIsData #StartupLessons #YCombinator #DesignAndDev #WebDesign #BuildInPublic

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Pretty much every website has one, you know, those three little lines, usually tucked in a corner, hiding a whole menu behind them. It's become what's known as the hamburger icon. And if you've ever visited fontawesome.com, you may have noticed ours isn't three lines. It's an actual burger, sesame seed bun and all.

On this episode of Podcast Awesome, we trace the icon back to a 1981 Xerox Star screen-space problem, through a 20-year disappearance, a comeback on the first iPhone, and a decade of top UX researchers telling designers to knock it off. And you could probably have guessed it, but the sandwich won anyway. Then we get to why Font Awesome designer Brian Talbot looked at the safe, conventional three-line icon, asked "where's the beef?!" and used the FA-burger icon in the most delicious way possible.

What We Cover

• How a 1981 screen-space problem at Xerox PARC turned into three stacked lines
• Norm Cox, the designer behind the original icon, and how he didn't even know it was called "hamburger" until a reporter called him decades later
• The icon's 20-year disappearance and its comeback on the first iPhone
• The Nielsen Norman Group research showing how hidden menus cut discoverability almost in half
• Why the same research group came back a decade later and declared the icon a win anyway
• Why Font Awesome's own menu icon isn't three lines but an illustrated burger, courtesy of Brian Talbot

Timestamps 00:00 – A burger on our own website 

00:01 – Welcome to Podcast Awesome 00:02 – Norm Cox and the Xerox Star 00:03 – "Road sign simple": Cox's design philosophy 

00:04 – The hamburger menu resurfaces on the first iPhone 

00:05 – Apple, Google, and a name nobody planned 

00:06 – The UX community picks a fight 

00:07 – Nielsen Norman Group's discoverability research 

00:08 – "Like a cheap fast food chain..." 

00:09 – A decade later: the hamburger icon wins anyway 

00:10 – Norm Cox on symbols that improve with time 

00:11 – Font Awesome's actual burger icon, courtesy of Brian Talbot 

00:13 – Wrap-up and credits

Links

• Get the burger icon: 
• Act 1 — The Origin
•  A Conversation with Norm Cox, Creator of the Hamburger Menu — Tri Vo, Mic Product Blog
• Act 3 — The Controversy
•  Hamburger Menus and Hidden Navigation Hurt UX Metrics — Nielsen Norman Group
• Hamburger Menu and UX Design — UXPin
• Act 4 — The Verdict
•  Hamburger Menu Icon Recognizability — Nielsen Norman Group, 2026
• Background / Research Reading
•  The History of the Hamburger Icon — Eternity Marketing

Credits 

• Hosted, produced, and edited by Matt Johnson 
• Theme song by Ronnie Martin 
• Music interstitials by Zach Malm 
• Video editing by Isaac Chase

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Font Awesome's Icon Wizard just got a serious upgrade, and it's now powerful enough to make genuinely great icons (or, per Mike's own admission, genuinely terrible ones, if that's more your speed).

In this episode of Podcast Awesome, host Matt Johnson sits down with Mike, Ed, and Jory (a rare full-team appearance) to talk about the launch of Icon Wizard 2.0. But it's not just a new coat of paint. You can now mix and match icons across styles, layer up to 20 elements at once with full control over size and position, build custom "user" characters by blending heads and bodies, and for the first time run Power Transforms in web fonts, not just SVG.

The crew traces the whole story: how the original Wizard grew out of an internal project once nicknamed F.A.R.Ts (Font Awesome Reusable Tidbits and Shapes, obviously), why this version was almost called the "Icon Genie," and how a customer's offhand feature request turned into a real, shippable icon built live in the tool.

There's also a real-time demo (a thumbs-up icon that grows a seedling), a debate over the correct number of poop-icon swirls, and a very serious 1-to-10 disappointment scale about the road not taken with "Icon F.A.R.Ts." The team is also running an Icon Wizard Contest through September 7, so if you want your creation featured in the gallery, this is your excuse to go play.

What We Cover

• What's actually new in Icon Wizard 2.0: mixing icon styles, layering up to 20 elements, add/subtract/stroke operations, and letters and numbers you can punch out of badges
• How Power Transforms — previously an SVG-only capability — now work in web fonts too, and the auto-generated cutouts that made it possible
• The origin story: F.A.R.Ts, the original modifier-only Wizard, and "Snuggles," the team's space for proof-of-concept projects
• Why the team loosened creative control in version 2, and what that trade-off means for good icons (and bad ones)
• Real community creations from the gallery, including a Starry Night icon, a centaur, a potted cactus, and a live green-thumb demo
• The near-miss name "Icon Genie" and how the team landed back on "Wizard"
• How to enter the Icon Wizard Contest (running through September 7) and where to send feedback during the beta

Timestamps

00:00 — Cold open: bad icons, good icons, and Jory's grim optimism 

00:01 — Welcome to the show and episode overview 

00:02 — The Icon Wizard Contest, explained 

00:04 — Community favorites: Starry Night, the user blender, and more 

00:05 — Where this all started: FARTs and the original pitch 

00:07 — "Snuggles," the team's space for proof-of-concept projects 

00:08 — The real origin story: bringing Power Transforms to web fonts 

00:10 — What "gooder" actually means in Icon Wizard 2.0 

00:12 — Ed breaks down what's new: mixing styles, 20 layers, and more 00:14 — The real pain point Icon Wizard solves 

00:17 — Why the Starry Night icon is a different kind of creation 

00:18 — It's basically a full design tool now 

00:20 — A customer feature request, solved live with the Wizard 00:21 — How v2 actually started: automating the cutouts 

00:23 — Live demo: building a green thumb icon in real time 

00:26 — Wizard walkthrough: the four tabs (icons, modifiers, elements, user) 00:28 — Add, subtract, stroke: how the Boolean operations work 

00:31 — Where to send feedback, and how the gallery and sharing work 

00:33 — Speed round: favorite modifiers 

00:34 — The secret difference between the poop icon and the poop modifier 00:35 — The "Icon FARTs" disappointment scale 

00:37 — Almost-names: Icon Genie, Icon Deity, and (sadly, no) Icon Gandalf 

00:40 — Icon Wizard earns its spot in the main nav 

00:41 — Wrap-up and Mike's sign-off

Credits

• Hosted by Matt Johnson
• Featuring Mike, Ed, and Jory
• Produced and edited by Matt Johnson
• Theme song by Ronnie Martin
• Music interstitials by Zach Malm
• Video editing by Isaac Chase

Links

• Icon Wizard: 
• Icon Wizard gallery and contest
• Feedback: [email protected]
• Font Awesome: https://fontawesome.com

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You've seen it a thousand times: you're two minutes late for a video conference call, you throw on a shirt with buttons (It's okay that you're still wearing jammie pants. Don't worry, nobody can see), and right when you need your computer most, that colorful spinning ball shows up to ruin your day. It's called a lot of things, but most of us just call it a curse word.

Today we trace the beach ball of death back to its actual origin story, which involves a $10,000 computer that flopped commercially, Steve Jobs in exile, a forgotten storage format, and Susan Kare's sketchbook. Turns out the most hated icon in computing has a surprisingly great pedigree.

We also get into why the beach ball exists at all (psst: it's your OS parenting a misbehaving app), how it could've been a spinning slice of pizza, and why Apple Silicon might be quietly killing it off for good.

What We Cover

• How much of life is spent waiting on machines, and why the frustration doesn't stop when you sit down at your computer
• The Xerox PARC origins of the "wait" cursor and Susan Kare's contributions at Apple
• Windows 95 and the golden age of customizable cursors (RIP, dancing banana)
• The lineage from hourglass to wristwatch to spinning disk to beach ball to flat ring
• How NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after leaving Apple, gave us the beach ball's true ancestor
• Why Apple's 1996 acquisition of NeXT brought the spinning cursor along with it
• How Aqua and Mac OS X turned a monochrome disk icon into a glossy rainbow ball
• The many names for the beach ball, including the delightfully specific "bun of death"
• Why the beach ball is becoming rarer on modern Macs, and what that means for a whole generation of users

Timestamps

00:00 - Cold open: the dreaded beach ball 

01:00 - Welcome to Podcast Awesome 

01:15 - How much of our lives we spend waiting on machines 

02:00 - Xerox PARC and the first "please wait" cursor 

02:30 - Susan Kare's contributions to the original Mac 

03:30 - Windows 95 and the era of customizable cursors 

05:00 - The full lineage: hourglass to beach ball to flat ring 

05:30 - Enter NeXT, Steve Jobs's post-Apple company 

06:00 - The $10,000 computer nobody could afford 

07:00 - Apple acquires NeXT, and the spinning disk comes along 

08:00 - The beach ball as an OS parenting a misbehaving app 

09:30 - Aqua, Mac OS X, and the rainbow makeover 

11:30 - Every alias for the beach ball, including the "bun of death" 

13:00 - How Apple Silicon is making the beach ball appearance rarer

3:45 - Closing thoughts and credits

Credits

• Hosted, produced, and edited by Matt Johnson
• Theme song by Ronnie Martin
• Music interstitials by Zach Malm
• Video editing by Isaac Chase

Sources Referenced

Erin J. Rimmer's "The Utterly Obscure History of the Computer Cursor" on Obsolete Technology

Dan Vincent's "What's Inside a NeXT Computer Accessory Kit?" on Userlandia

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Picture this serious, sterile scene: scientists in lab coats, pocket protectors, carrying clipboards, and nobody’s making eye contact. Nobody would guess that this backdrop would produce some of the best internet lore.

In this episode, we dig into the myth that the 404 error page came from "Room 404" at CERN, track down what a co-creator of the web actually had to say about it, and land on the real, much more boring origin. Along the way we detour into the HTTP status code that was invented as an April Fools' joke, then defended by the developer community hard enough that it got its own RFC. We close it out with a tour of the internet's best 404 pages, including a deep dive into Font Awesome's own, with Jory Raphael.

What We Cover

• The Room 404 myth: how it started, why it spread, and why Robert Cailliau, one of the actual creators of the web, wants nothing to do with it
• The real, much less exciting origin of the 404 status code
• Why HTTP works like a librarian with no short-term memory
• Larry Masinter's HTCPCP proposal and the accidental birth of the 418 "I'm a teapot" code
• How the dev community fought to save 418 when the IETF tried to reclaim it
• A tour of the internet's best 404 pages: GitHub, Pixar, Lego, and Figma
• Behind the scenes of Font Awesome's own 404 pages with Jory Raphael, including the Ghostbusters, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Star Wars, and Mario references hiding in them
• The Easter egg hiding on the Font Awesome icons page (and another one on Blog Awesome)

Timestamps

• 00:00 – Cold open: if particle physics research is this serious, how did it produce such a goofy myth?
• 01:00 – Intro to the episode and the CERN backstory begins, where human "servers" fetched documents by hand
• 03:00 – How the Room 404 legend took hold, per Wired's reporting
• 04:00 – Robert Cailliau's one-word review of the myth: "Sigh"
• 05:00 – The actual, much more mundane origin of the 404 code, plus the DMV and librarian analogies
• 07:00 – Larry Masinter, RFC 2324, and the Hypertext Coffee Pot Control Protocol
• 08:00 – The community backlash when the IETF tried to reclaim status code 418
• 09:00 – Shane Brunswick's save418.com stand, then back to great 404 pages: GitHub's Octocat
• 10:00 – Pixar's Inside Out 2 tie-in 404
• 11:00 – Lego's "oh, bricks" 404 and Figma's interactive one
• 12:00 – Font Awesome's own 404 pages, including the Susan Kare bomb-icon origin story
• 13:00 – The Ghostbusters Easter egg
• 14:00 – The Planes, Trains and Automobiles reference and Brian's hidden hand-wave Easter egg
• 15:00 – Star Wars references and the FA-ndolorian
• 16:00 – The Mario reference, the icons page Easter egg, and the old Blog Awesome 404s, including "Where's my sandwich?"
• 17:00 – A shoutout to Brian, the mind behind Font Awesome's 404 copy, and the outro begins
• 18:00 – Closing credits and sign-off

Credits

Hosted by Matt Johnson

Featuring Jory Raphael

Produced and edited by Matt Johnson

Theme song by Ronnie Martin

Music interstitials by Zach Malm

Video editing by Isaac Chase

Links

• SmarterMSP: Tech Time Warp — The 411 on the 404 Page
• The History of the Web: Sorry Computer, You're Not a Teapot
• RFC 2324: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)
• Save418.com
• Font Awesome

#PodcastAwesome #404Error #WebHistory #InternetLore #TechTrivia #HTTPStatusCodes #FontAwesome #DesignPodcast

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What if software had a final season? Josh Williams is back for round two, and this conversation goes places the first one didn't. We get into designing as a generalist instead of a specialist, why some of the best products (RIP Gowalla, RIP Path) might have worked better as limited series instead of forever-apps, and what it actually feels like to use AI tools day to day — not the hot-take version, the real one, where the hardest part isn't the tech, it's knowing when to stop adding features.

Josh also breaks down how the Mosaic icon pack came together, Jory reflects on why his dad's Vermont highway signs are a kind of legacy he thinks about often, and Josh shares his advice for those getting into icon design today. Spoiler: it involves not knowing the rules yet, and that's a good thing.

What We Cover

• Why physical, tangible work sticks with you in a way digital work — which can vanish with a hard drive — never quite does.
• Jory's dad's landscape architecture and signage firm, and how that legacy is scattered across Vermont
• The Mosaic icon pack, and how Scott Riley's Mindful Design site used FA's Slab icon set in a way the team never expected
• Generalist vs. specialist: why Josh keeps circling back to brand work but can't stay in one lane
• The venture-capital pressure that pushes good products toward becoming "everything apps"
• Gowalla, Path, and the idea of software with a beginning, middle, and end — like a TV show's final season
• The early App Store era of one-off apps that just were what they were (RIP the beer-drinking app)
• Font Awesome's own internal AI experiment weekend, and what came out of it
• Taste and discernment as the new bottleneck now that building is fast and cheap
• Why "don't be obsequious" should now be a standing instruction in AI prompts
• Josh's advice for anyone starting out in icon design today
• What's next for the Uni calendar, and a wishlist for a fully custom, build-your-own version

Timestamps

00:00 – Reaching the edge of current tools and processes 

00:00 – Intro: what this episode covers 01:00 – The joy of physical, tangible design work 

02:00 – Jory's father's legacy in Vermont signage 

04:00 – How the Mosaic icon pack might get used and remixed 

05:00 – Generalist vs. specialist: where Josh lands 

07:00 – Bringing different people and disciplines together 

08:00 – VC pressure and the "scale infinitely" mindset 09:00 – Software with a beginning, middle, and end 

11:00 – Gowalla, Path, and products as a moment in time 

13:00 – Building an intentional, sustainable studio model 

14:00 – The early App Store's one-off apps 

17:00 – Font Awesome's internal AI experiment weekend 

19:00 – Taste and discernment as the new bottleneck 

20:00 – Prompting AI to not be obsequious 

21:00 – Advice for getting into icon design today 

23:00 – Breaking the rules you don't know exist yet  – The Mosaic pack vs. the Uni calendar rules 24:00 – A wishlist: fully custom, build-your-own calendars 

25:00 – Where to find Josh, and what's next for him

Credits

• Featuring Josh Williams and Jory Raphael
• Hosted, Produced, and edited by Matt Johnson
• Theme song by Ronnie Martin
• Music interstitials by Zach Malm
• Video editing by Isaac Chase

Links

• Font Awesome Mosaic icon pack
• Josh Williams: @JW on Instagram and Threads

Hashtags

#PodcastAwesome #IconDesign #FontAwesome #DesignPodcast #AIandDesign #ProductDesign #BrandDesign #TechPodcast #CreativeIndustry #DesignCareers

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Josh Williams has been designing icons since before it was a “real” job.

These days, Josh is one of the most respected icon and identity designers working in the field. He helped shape the Font Awesome and Web Awesome logos, and he just designed Mosaic — a brand-new icon pack for Font Awesome Pro with roots in his long-running Uni Calendar letterpress project and a style that's unlike anything we've shipped before.

In Part 1, we talk about where Mosaic came from, what it looks like when a designer actually gets creative freedom, why the web went homogenous, and whether it's finally starting to break back out. Also: Kaleidoscope themes, MySpace CSS exploits, and a cease-and-desist that made at least one person internet famous.

🗒️ What We Cover
🗑️ How Josh nearly bricked a Mac trying to edit the trash can icon
🌈 Kaleidoscope themes, Winamp skins, and the era of tinkering
✨ The MySpace CSS underground (yes, it was a thing)
🖨️ The Uni Calendar letterpress project and how it became Mosaic
🕊️ What "creative freedom" actually feels like when someone hands it to you
🌐 Why everything on the web started looking the same and why it might not stay that way
🤖 AI, low-cost experimentation, and the return of design personality
📸 What Josh is doing next (hint: it involves Keegan Jones and Instagram)

⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – Cold open: demystification
01:00 – Intro
02:00 – Meeting Josh / fanboy moment
03:00 – Logo collaboration: Web Awesome and Font Awesome marks
04:00 – Announcing Mosaic
06:00 – Uni Calendar roots and the style thread
09:00 – The ResEdit / trash can story
13:00 – Kaleidoscope themes era
14:00 – MySpace CSS and early community
17:00 – Tinkerer culture and design demystification
18:00 – How homogenous web cycles work
21:00 – AI and low-cost experimentation
23:00 – What Josh is doing next

✨ Check out the Mosaic icon pack: https://fontawesome.com/icons

🔗 Credits
Hosted, produced, and edited by Matt Johnson
Co-host Jory Raphael
Featuring Josh Williams
Theme song by Ronnie Martin
Music interstitials by Zach Malm
Video editing by Isaac Chase

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Episode Summary

What happens when you give a world-class icon designer a dream brief with almost no boundaries? A brief existential crisis, and eventually a beautiful type-inspired icon packs for Font Awesome 7. 😅

In this episode, Matt and Jory chat with icon designer Laura Bohill about the making of Chisel — the wonderfully chunky icon pack she designed for Font Awesome 7. They get into the weird magic of creative constraints, why icon design is really just tiny-illustration puzzle solving, and how type, branding, and metaphor all shape great icon systems.

They also talk about freelance life, protecting your creative brain, why not every design problem should follow you into your evenings, and how sometimes the best ideas show up only after you’ve stepped away from the screen. It’s thoughtful, funny, nerdy, and full of delightful icon design rabbit trails. 

What We Cover in This Episode

•  ✨ How Laura went from “dream project” to “I am spiritually untethered” 
•  ✏️ How a book cover typeface sparked the visual idea behind the Chisel icon pack 
•  🧩 Why icon design is basically a never-ending series of tiny, beautiful puzzles 
•  🧠 Why creative boundaries and time away from work matter more than hustle culture admits 
•  🖼️ How Laura balances clarity vs. creativity in icon design systems 
•  🏰 Why designing icons for Historic England meant trading “upload” icons for castles and country houses 
•  🛠️ Laura’s journey from Illustrator to Figma, with a little help from Noah 
•  🌍 Why icon designers might secretly be some of the most-seen artists on the internet 

Timestamps

00:00 — Dream project meets existential crisis
00:04:00 — How an open-ended brief led to Chisel’s distinctive style
00:09:30 — Why Laura doesn’t usually do self-directed design projects
00:12:00 — How she found icon design through illustration and freelance work
00:16:00 — Freelance life, boundaries, and protecting creative energy
00:20:00 — How type design influences icon systems
00:30:00 — Why icon design is really a puzzle-solving practice
00:36:00 — Balancing clarity and creativity in icon systems
00:40:30 — Historic England, castles, and designing beyond typical UI icons
00:45:00 — Laura’s Figma origin story and Noah’s helpful onboarding
00:48:00 — Why icon designers are quietly famous
00:50:00 — Find Laura online and final thoughts

Links & Resources

• Laura Bohill / Laura Bee
  Find Laura Laura Bee online 😄 
• Font Awesome 7
  Explore Font Awesome 7 and its small batch icon packs, including Chisel
• Chisel icon pack
  Laura’s custom icon pack for Font Awesome 7, inspired by stroke contrast in typography 
• YouTube version of this episode
  Watch the visual demo version to see the Chisel icons on screen while the team talks through the design 
• Figma
  Making the leap from Illustrator to Figma
• Historic England
  Laura’s recent icon system project featuring castles, parks, and places of worship

Credits
Hosted by Matt Johnson
Featuring: Laura Bohill, and Jory Raphael
Produced and edited by Matt Johnson
Theme song: Ronnie Martin
Music interstitials:  Zach Malm
Additional video editing: Isaac Chase

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