Podcast Awesome

Font Awesome

On Podcast Awesome we talk to members of the Font Awesome team about icons, design, tech, business, and of course, nerdery. 🎙️ Podcast Awesome is your all-access pass into the creative engine behind Font Awesome — the web’s favorite icon toolkit. Join host Matt Johnson and the Font Awesome crew (and friends) for deep dives into icon design, front-end engineering, software development, healthy business culture, and a whole lot of lovingly-rendered nerdery. From technical explorations of our open-source tooling, chats with web builders, icon designers, and content creators, with the occasional gleeful rants about early internet meme culture, we bring you stories and strategies from the trenches of building modern web software — with a healthy dose of 80s references and tech dad jokes. 🎧 Perfect for: Icon design and content-first thinkingCreative process and collaborative designWork-life balance in techRemote team culture and async collaborationInternet history, meme archaeology, and other nerd ephemera 🧠 Come for the design wisdom, stay for the deep meme cuts and beautifully crafted icons.

  1. Living the Dream: Dan Cederholm's Creative Journey [Part 2] | Podcast Awesome

    HACE 3 DÍAS

    Living the Dream: Dan Cederholm's Creative Journey [Part 2] | Podcast Awesome

    🧠 What do LEGO logos, hand-puppet dreams, citrus gadgets, and naming things "Turbo" have in common? They're all part of Dan Cederholm’s design universe — and part of this wide-ranging, joy-filled second half of our conversation. In this episode, Dan returns to talk about:  • Embracing constraints as a creative fuel source • Naming fonts after misspelled words (because ... domains) • The delightful hellscape of naming anything in tech • Why imposter syndrome might actually be useful • And how a puppet changed everything at Font Awesome 🧡 🎧 It’s a show-and-tell episode full of unexpected design wisdom, warm fuzzies, and orange peelers. What We Cover in This Episode: • 🧠 Dan’s creative process: one font at a time • 🚫 Naming things is still the hardest problem in tech • 🐀 The birth of the Font Possum Puppet • 🧃 The power of a really good citrus squeezer • 🤖 Why AI can’t fake taste (yet) • 💌 Why Dan's newsletter works (and yours could too) • 😵‍💫 Making peace with imposter syndrome • 🧩 Why being weird is a superpower ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:15 – The creative process of typeface design 04:04 – Naming fonts is a nightmare 06:05 – The importance of naming & branding 12:25 – Imposter syndrome in the creative industry 18:15 – A puppet changed everything 22:31 – Why a newsletter is like old-school blogging 29:03 – Orange peelers, joy, and the power of small specificity 37:17 – The impact of creativity 38:14 – Building community through creativity 41:16 – Wrap up with Dan Cederholm 42:24 – Final Thoughts & Credits 📌 Links & Resources • Dan Cederholm → https://simplebits.com • Dan's newsletter → https://simplebits.com/newsletter • Turbo Typeface → https://simplebits.com/fonts • Font Possum cameo → [FontAwesome YouTube Channel] • BrickLink Studio (Lego design app) → https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    45 min
  2. Living the Dream: Dan Cederholm's Creative Journey (Part 1)

    14 OCT

    Living the Dream: Dan Cederholm's Creative Journey (Part 1)

    Summary Designer, author, and co-founder of Dribbble, Dan Cederholm joins Podcast Awesome to chat with Matt Johnson and Jory Raphael about finding joy in creativity later in life, making fonts just for fun, and the art of embracing imperfection. From typefaces and merch to dice games and design detours, Dan shares how side projects, constraints, and a healthy dose of curiosity keep the creative spark alive. This two-part conversation is full of laughter, nostalgia, and lessons about learning new things just because they’re fun. You’ll walk away inspired to make something— anything — awesome. Key Takeaways Creativity thrives in curiosity: Dan reminds us that learning new things (even outside your job) can reignite your creative energy.Constraints fuel originality: Sometimes not knowing everything — or having limited tools — can sometimes help create the most human, interesting work.Merch can tell a story: From fonts to dice games, playful side projects become part of a designer’s personal brand.Imperfection = personality: The best designs often come with flaws that make them real, memorable, and relatable.Spend time not doing your job: Font Awesome’s team philosophy — creativity grows when you step outside your usual sandbox.Timestamps 00:00 — Introduction and catching up with Dan Cederholm02:00 — Typefaces as creative puzzles06:00 — The joy of passion projects10:00 — The first font and lessons from “Chameleon”18:00 — The lineage of icon design and learning from imperfection26:00 — Failures, Field Notes, and finding the next fun thing30:00 — Creative constraints and the beauty of not knowing everything36:00 — Humor, joy, and “making stuff that makes you laugh”38:00 — The icons that exist just because they’re funny42:00 — Hidden glyphs, zombie hands, and bonus icons in fonts44:00 — Wrap-up and where to find Dan onlineRelated Links SimpleBits.com — Dan’s home for fonts, merch, and creative experimentsDan’s Newsletter — The one Font Awesome staffers never skipDribbble — Co-founded by Dan, still inspiring designers everywhereCredits Produced and edited by Matt Johnson Video editing by Isaac Chase Theme music by Ronnie Martin Interstitial music by Zach Malm Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    45 min

  3. 30 SEP

    How We Built Web Awesome with 11ty (and Why It’s So Fast)

    Build once, run everywhere. In this full-nerd, front-end-leaning episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Zach Leatherman (creator of Eleventy) and Konnor Rogers (Web Awesome developer) to chat about how a static site generator just might be the key to building some of the most powerful, performant documentation on the web. We dig deep into Eleventy’s evolution, Web Awesome’s hybrid architecture, and how a team of devs found a way to keep docs fast, flexible, and secure — without rewriting everything from scratch or giving up on open source values. Spoiler: they didn’t go full ExpressJS for fun. Whether you’re a seasoned dev or a newb, this one's packed with insight, edge-case explorations, and some seriously satisfying build-time nerdery. In this episode, we explore: ⚡️ Why Eleventy’s simplicity still scales  🧠 Making static sites feel dynamic (without a heavy JS framework)  🔐 How Web Awesome handles auth + private docs with minimal friction  🚫 Avoiding vendor lock-in and runtime gotchas  📦 The future of Eleventy in browsers, edge runtimes, and beyond Pull up your terminal. This one’s for you. 🔗 Links & Credits 🎵 Theme by Ronnie Martin🎛️ Audio mastering by Chris Enns (Lemon Productions)🎹 Interstitial music by Zach Malm🎥 Video support by Isaac Chase🔗 Eleventy🔗 Web Awesome Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    35 min
  4. Clippy Cult: The Paperclip That Wouldn’t Quit

    25 SEP

    Clippy Cult: The Paperclip That Wouldn’t Quit

    Inside the UX lessons, internet lore, and surprising comeback of Clippy Love him or loathe him, you remember him. Clippy — the googly-eyed paperclip that lived inside Microsoft Word — has become a permanent fixture in internet culture. But how did a productivity tool become the patron saint of annoying-yet-adorable UI? In this episode of Podcast Awesome, we’re digging into the cult of Clippy with behind-the-scenes insights from Clippy's original creator Kevan Atteberry and Microsoft designer Sam Cundall. From meme fame to Microsoft Teams emoji, Clippy's legacy is more layered than you think. 📝 What We Cover in This Episode: 📎 Why Clippy was loved and hated🧠 The psychology of nostalgic design🔁 When Microsoft secretly brought Clippy back🤖 What Clippy might teach us about the future of AI assistants✍️ thoughts on reviving legacy designs the right way⏱️ Timestamps: 00:00 – Welcome to the Cult of Clippy 02:00 – The origin story: from helpful to hated 04:30 – Nostalgia and annoyance: why we love to hate him 06:00 – Microsoft’s secret Clippy emoji comeback 08:00 – What makes emoji design "work"? 10:00 – Fun at work: why weirdness builds culture 14:00 – The creator's take: Kevan Atteberry on designing Clippy 20:00 – From embarrassment to pride: Clippy's redemption arc 24:00 – Clippy vs. Siri: The rise of personality-driven UI 26:00 – Final thoughts: where personality fits in UX 🔗 Links & Resources: Sam Kundal on LinkedInKevan Atteberry's booksHow to add a paperclip emoji to your UIVote a favorite icon up the leaderboard🎥 Podcast Awesome on YouTube 🎶 The Font Awesome Theme Song – Composed by Ronnie Martin 🎸 Music Interstitials by Zach Malm 🎬 Produced and edited by Matt Johnson with some extra help from Isaac Chase Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    26 min
  5. 🎙️ Rage Coding, Headless Web Components, and the Future of DX with Burton Smith

    17 SEP

    🎙️ Rage Coding, Headless Web Components, and the Future of DX with Burton Smith

    Have you ever rage-coded your way into building a developer tool that actually fixes things? Burton Smith has. And we’re here for it. In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt and Web Awesome's boss, Cory Laviska chat with Burton Smith. Burton is an open source wizard and creator of the Web Components Toolkit, and he tells us about the gap between the promise of Web Components and the messy reality devs often face. 💻 Burton’s toolkit bridges that gap like Gandalf on a DX bender. In this episode we dive into: ⚙️ Developer experience pain points 🧩 Custom Elements Manifests (CEMs) and real-world tooling 🎯 Form-associated custom elements, declarative shadow DOM, and why they still have rough edges 🚀 Why frameworks finally (mostly) play nice with Web Components 📦 How open source tools can fix the stuff we all silently suffer through 🧠 And why making components “just work” should be table stakes This one’s for devs who are tired of wiring up wrappers, fighting with VS Code autocomplete, or wondering why their component still doesn’t show up right in Storybook. ✨ Bonus: We get a little spicy about SSR, headless UI, and whether a global design system is even a thing we want. ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 – Welcome to Podcast Awesome  02:00 – Meet Burton Smith: The Stuff Breaker  04:00 – Why Web Components Tooling is (Still) a Pain  06:00 – Closing the Gap Between DX and Dev Reality  12:00 – CEMs, ASTs, and Metadata Magic  20:00 – Form-associated Custom Elements (and the Weird Gaps)  24:00 – Declarative Shadow DOM: Blessing or Band-Aid?  28:00 – SSR, Frameworks, and the Next Frontier  34:00 – Global Design Systems, Gatekeeping, and Interop  42:00 – Headless UI vs. Useless DX  44:00 – How to Support Burton + Where to Find the Toolkit 🔗 Links & Resources 🌐 Burton’s Toolkit: https://wc-toolkit.com 🧙‍♂️ Follow Burton on GitHub: https://github.com/Breakstuff 🐦 Burton on Social: @StuffBreaker 📄 Learn more about Custom Elements Manifest: https://github.com/webcomponents/custom-elements-manifest 🛠️ Web Awesome: https://webawesome.dev 🧡 Shoutout to all you open sourcers building magic after hours 🎥 Podcast Awesome on YouTube  🎶 The Font Awesome Theme Song – Composed by Ronnie Martin 🎸 Music Interstitials by Zach Malm 🎬 Produced and edited by Matt Johnson with some extra help from Isaac Chase  Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    46 min
  6. 🖇️ Podcast Awesome: The Story Behind the Stapler Icon

    19 AGO

    🖇️ Podcast Awesome: The Story Behind the Stapler Icon

    🔴 “Excuse me … I believe you have my stapler?” One line. Infinite memes. A red-hot icon. In this episode of The Story Behind the Icon, we dive deep into the surprisingly rich lore behind the humble office stapler — and how a cult classic film, a soft-spoken cubicle dweller, and a spray-painted prop turned it into a cultural artifact. 🎧 Whether you’ve got 37 pieces of flair or just enough sarcasm to survive corporate life, this one’s for the design nerds, Office Space devotees, and UI jokesters looking for the perfect button metaphor. 🔍 What We Cover in This Episode 🔴 The origin story of Milton’s beloved red stapler  🎞️ Mike Judge’s animated roots and early Office Space shorts  💻 Remote work, legacy office gear, and the evolution of workplace design  🧑‍💼 Font Awesome’s very own “Milton” and the logic behind the madness  🎨 How to recreate Milton’s soul in HTML with our duotone icon  🎬 The real reason Swingline started making red staplers ⏰ Timestamps 00:00 – Welcome to Podcast Awesome  01:25 – A new take on the old office  02:40 – Meet Milton: The patron saint of passive resistance  04:20 – Mike Judge: From Beavis and Butthead to box office satire  05:55 – The stapler becomes an icon  06:35 – Meet FA’s own Milton (Hi, Steve 👋)  07:20 – Grumpiness as UI insight  08:05 – Milton’s stapler wasn’t red... until it was  09:00 – Design challenge: Where will you use the stapler icon? 09:50 – Commission your own icon or vote one into existence 10:30 – Credits and a final plea: Return. The. Stapler. 🔗 Links & Resources 🖇️ Stapler Icon on Font Awesome 📽️ Office Space (1999) 🎨 Vote for an icon on the leaderboard 📝 FA Blog: The Story Behind the Icon Series 🎥 Podcast Awesome on YouTube – Full uncut convo with extra music nerdiness 🎶 The Font Awesome Theme Song – Composed by Ronnie Martin 🎸 Music Interstitials by Zach Malm 🎬 Produced and edited by Matt Johnson Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    10 min
  7. Invisible Creature’s Don Clark on Nostalgia, Iconography, and Staying Human

    29 JUL

    Invisible Creature’s Don Clark on Nostalgia, Iconography, and Staying Human

    Designing Joy: Don Clark of Invisible Creature on Creativity, Collectibles & Culture In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt hangs out with legendary designer Don Clark of Invisible Creature to dive into the analog soul of digital design. From their punk rock roots and Grammy-nominated album covers to art directing for Seattle’s swankiest restaurant, Don and his brother Ryan have created work you’ve seen —whether you know it or not. They discuss growing up with a NASA illustrator grandpa, how nostalgia fuels creativity, the value of physical objects in a swipe-and-scroll world, and how a sibling-run design studio rides the waves of industry change. It’s a masterclass in storytelling, aesthetics, and sneaky inspiration. Plus, Don once designed a 7-story mural for Newark Airport that one construction worker told him no one would ever notice. Art, meet irony. ✨ What We Cover in This Episode 🚀 Grandpa drew spaceships for NASA — no big deal🎸 From hardcore zines to Grammy-nominated album art🧸 Why physical objects still matter (even in a scroll-y, swipey world)😊 Nostalgia, and the purposeful creation of joy 🏠 Turning a love of toys and typography into brand work for Target, Canlis, and more🏄🏻‍♂️ Creating a career by riding the wave (not controlling it)👾 How Invisible Creature got its name — and why most people don’t realize they’ve seen their work🍽️ Art direction in fine dining, and designing for iconic spaces⏱️ Timestamps [00:01:00] – Don’s creative upbringing & grandpa's NASA work  [00:04:00] – From punk flyers to full-time design  [00:08:00] – Physical design in a digital world  [00:12:00] – Object design, collectibles, and vintage influence  [00:16:00] – Tapping nostalgia the right way [00:20:00] – Album covers, influence, and desktop publishing [00:24:00] – The decline of CDs & the rise of gig posters [00:28:00] – The challenges (and joys) of working with family [00:32:00] – Canlis restaurant and entering the fine dining space [00:36:00] – Creating inspiring physical spaces [00:38:00] – Why “Invisible Creature” is the perfect name [00:42:00] – Good design as invisible, objective experience [00:44:00] – Designing stamps, murals, and children’s Bibles [00:46:00] – Streamlining creativity after 25 years in the biz [00:48:00] – Wrapping up and why riding the wave matters 🔗 Links & Resources Invisible CreatureMind Reader Music – Album packaging by Ryan Clark & Kevin MooreCanlis – Seattle fine dining where Don is art directorArt of the Incredibles Book – Don’s favorite Pixar art bookPodcast Awesome on YouTube – Full uncut convo with extra music nerdinessThe Font Awesome Theme Song – Composed by Ronnie MartinMusic Interstitials by Zach MalmAudio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon ProductionsProduced and edited by Matt JohnsonStay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    48 min
  8. Behind the Icon: Cowbell-Circle-Plus

    24 JUL

    Behind the Icon: Cowbell-Circle-Plus

    💥 A Podcast Awesome Deep Cut Episode Description: 🛎️ Guess what? We got a fever … and the only prescription is … well, you know. In this very special episode of Podcast Awesome, we hit pause on our usual tech-and-icon-nerdery to unleash a full-throttle ode to one of the wackiest icons in our set: Cowbell Circle Plus. What starts as a nod to the legendary SNL sketch featuring Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken (The Bruce Dickinson, thank you very much), quickly turns into a globetrotting, time-hopping, cultural deep dive through the unexpected history of the humble cowbell. From medieval Irish cow raids 🐄⚔️ to German cowbell zoning laws 📏🔔 to the altars of rock and roll 🥁🎸, we unpack how this sonic sidekick moo-ved (hehe) from pasture to punchline. Plus: Icon Designer extraordinaire Jory Rafael stops by to share how we brought the Cowbell icon to life (spoiler: it did not involve raiding any farms). 🧀 What We Cover in This Episode: 🐄 Cowbell as medieval emergency alert system 🏴‍☠️ Cattle raids and why your cow needed anti-theft bells in 12th century Ireland 🛠️ The surprising craftsmanship behind cowbells (hello, zoning laws!) 🌍 How cowbells show up in global rituals 🎶 The greatest cowbell moments in music — from Foghat to KISS to the Beastie Boys 😂 The SNL sketch that made “More Cowbell” the rallying cry for comedy nerds everywhere 🔤 Behind-the-scenes with the FA team: how we turned “More Cowbell” into an icon 🤘 A lightning round of underappreciated cowbell bangers ⏱️ Timestamps: 00:00 – Welcome to the Weird World of Cowbell  01:15 – SNL Meets SVG: The Inspiration Behind the Icon  02:30 – History Lesson: Cowbells as Analog GPS  04:20 – Cattle Raids, Irish Wars, and Why Your Cow Needed Protection  06:10 – Cowbell Zoning Laws? Yep, That Was a Thing  07:00 – Superstition, Spirit-Banishing & Ceremonial Bells  08:15 – Enter: The Iconic More Cowbell Sketch (2000, SNL)  09:00 – Icon Deep Dive with Jory Rafael  10:20 – Musical Cowbell Moments You Didn’t Know You Needed  11:30 – Wrap-up & Credits Roll Like a Cow in a Parade 🔗 Links & Resources: Cowbell Circle Plus Icon on Font AwesomeMore Cowbell SNL Sketch (NBC)Cattle Raid of Cooley (Wikipedia)Alex Poiry makes an appearance as the medieval town council. Music shoutouts: Foghat, Beastie Boys, KISS, Judas Priest, Queen, Thin Lizzy, and moreCredits: Matt Johnson (host + producer), Ronnie Martin (theme song), Zach Malm (music interstitials), Chris Enns @ Lemon Productions (mastering), Isaac Chase (video edit magic)Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    11 min
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On Podcast Awesome we talk to members of the Font Awesome team about icons, design, tech, business, and of course, nerdery. 🎙️ Podcast Awesome is your all-access pass into the creative engine behind Font Awesome — the web’s favorite icon toolkit. Join host Matt Johnson and the Font Awesome crew (and friends) for deep dives into icon design, front-end engineering, software development, healthy business culture, and a whole lot of lovingly-rendered nerdery. From technical explorations of our open-source tooling, chats with web builders, icon designers, and content creators, with the occasional gleeful rants about early internet meme culture, we bring you stories and strategies from the trenches of building modern web software — with a healthy dose of 80s references and tech dad jokes. 🎧 Perfect for: Icon design and content-first thinkingCreative process and collaborative designWork-life balance in techRemote team culture and async collaborationInternet history, meme archaeology, and other nerd ephemera 🧠 Come for the design wisdom, stay for the deep meme cuts and beautifully crafted icons.

Información

  • Creador
    Font Awesome
  • Años de actividad
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodios
    68
  • Clasificación
    Apto
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Podcast Awesome
  • Mostrar sitio web
    Podcast Awesome

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