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. Web Awesome Has Landed: Here’s How to Stop Starting From Scratch

    15 小時前

    Web Awesome Has Landed: Here’s How to Stop Starting From Scratch

    Episode Summary What does it really take to ship something as powerful, polished, and downright magical as Web Awesome? In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Lindsay and Cory, the dynamic duo behind the official launch of Web Awesome. Together, they peel back the curtain on how the team brought a customizable design system to life (without summoning any cursed CSS incantations). From the slick Theme Builder to the deeply thoughtful Figma integration, from production-ready patterns to future-forward prototyping dreams, this convo is packed with insights for devs, designers, and nerds of all kinds. Get the scoop on stretch goals, community feedback, and why starting with a “sh*tty first draft” is actually a power move. Oh! And they may or may not be plotting a future where we don’t even need Figma anymore. Gasp! What We Cover in This Episode: 🛠 The design magic behind the Theme Builder 🎨 Patterns and why you shouldn’t reinvent the checkout form 🧩 The current state of Figma files — and where they’re headed 🧪 Bridging the gap between prototyping and real code 🔮 A sneak peek at future stretch goal components (hello, toasts and video!) ⚡ How Web Awesome + Eleventy = your new dream dev stack 🗣 Why your newbie feedback matters more than you think Timestamps 00:00 – Welcome & introductions 01:45 – Life after launch: relief or revving up? 03:30 – Making the Theme Builder powerful and friendly 05:40 – Patterns that just work (and why that's a good thing) 07:30 – Balancing usability and delightful surprises 08:15 – Figma files, MVP vibes, and real feedback 10:20 – The future of theming via Figma plugins 12:00 – Stretch goal components: what’s shipped and what’s next 14:30 – Why prototyping with code might replace Figma 16:45 – Web Awesome meets Eleventy: the ultimate team-up 19:00 – Templates, page builders, and lowering the barrier to entry 20:30 – Why new users’ feedback is gold 22:00 – How to connect with the team & share your experience Links & Resources 🌐 [Web Awesome](https://webawesome.com) 📣 [Join the Community](https://webawesome.com/community) 🧵 [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/webawesome/webawesome/discussions) 📬 Email: [help@webawesome.com](mailto:help@webawesome.com) / [hello@webawesome.com](mailto:hello@webawesome.com) 💬 Join us on Discord – link on the community page! 🧠 Learn more about [Jacob’s Law](https://lawsofux.com/jakobs-law/) 🎁 Don’t forget: 20% off Web Awesome Pro until Nov 19th! Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

    23 分鐘
  2. WordPress Just Got Awesome (Again) – Font Awesome Plugin v5 Deep Dive with Mike Wilkerson

    11月4日

    WordPress Just Got Awesome (Again) – Font Awesome Plugin v5 Deep Dive with Mike Wilkerson

    Episode Summary: We're heading back to the basement — (sort of). In this episode, Matt catches up with Mike Wilkerson, the OG guest of Podcast Awesome, to unveil the biggest update yet to the official Font Awesome WordPress plugin. From block editor visual support to full-on SVG injection wizardry (yes, that’s a thing), this version is all about giving developers and designers more power, more precision, and fewer plugin conflicts. Whether you’re a WordPress purist or a page builder rebel, you’ll walk away knowing how to get your icons looking sharp, staying pro, and loading like a dream. 🧠 What We Cover in This Episode: 🔌 The origin story of the plugin (and the furnace that helped launch it)🧱 Full block editor visual editing support (finally WYSIWYG!)🛠️ SVG injection + self-hosting benefits🛡️ How to squash plugin conflicts like a pro🔍 Page builder struggles—and what might be coming next🤝 How to send feedback to actual humans™ at Font Awesome⏱️ Timestamps: 00:00 – Basement beginnings & podcast nostalgia  02:00 – WordPress + Font Awesome: how widespread is it?  04:00 – Why Version 5 is a game-changer  06:00 – How inline SVGs improve performance and reduce conflict  08:00 – Self-hosting benefits & advanced options  10:00 – When to load (or not load) your kit  12:00 – Compatibility tips for older content  14:00 – What’s next for FA + WordPress  16:00 – How to give feedback to actual humans™ 🔗 Links & Resources: Official Font Awesome WordPress PluginUsing Kits with WordPressConflict Detection & TroubleshootingEmail us: hello@fontawesome.com Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

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

    10月30日

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

    10月14日

    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 分鐘
  5. Clippy Cult: The Paperclip That Wouldn’t Quit

    9月25日

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

    9月17日

    🎙️ 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 分鐘
  7. 🖇️ Podcast Awesome: The Story Behind the Stapler Icon

    8月19日

    🖇️ 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 分鐘

評分與評論

4.7
(滿分 5 顆星)
7 則評分

簡介

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.

你可能也會喜歡