Podcast Awesome - TopPodcast.com

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

Podcast Awesome — Technology
Podcast 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 thinking

Creative process and collaborative design

Work-life balance in tech

Remote team culture and async collaboration

Internet history, meme archaeology, and other nerd ephemera

🧠 Come for the design wisdom, stay for the deep meme cuts and beautifully crafted icons.

Copyright: © 2023 Podcast Awesome

Latest Episodes:

Nerd Show and Tell: Meet Noah Jacobus, Senior Icon Designer Feb 14, 2023

Show notes

🎧 Exploring Sharp Icons, Retro Gaming & Design Rhythms with Noah Jacobus

In the inaugural episode of Nerd Show and Tell, Matt Johnson chats with Font Awesome icon designer Noah Jacobus about the creative crossover between music, icon design, and visual rhythm.

Noah shares how his background in music education unexpectedly shaped his approach to visual design, leading to his work designing the Font Awesome Sharp icon family — a bold reimagining of one of the web’s most iconic tools.

They dive into:

The design philosophy behind the Sharp icon aesthetic
How musical hierarchy and rhythm translate to scalable iconography
The behind-the-scenes grind of crafting over 20,000 icons
Noah’s obsession with retro handheld games (looking at you, Playdate 👾)
Why design and game nostalgia often go hand-in-hand

Whether you're into SVG design, retro game consoles, or just love seeing how seemingly unrelated disciplines collide — this one’s for you.

⏱️ Episode Timestamps

00:08 – Designing the Font Awesome Sharp family
02:59 – Music meets visual arts
04:30 – Rhythm, hierarchy & design language
10:07 – Joining the Font Awesome team
12:32 – Sharp icon design challenges
16:56 – Handheld retro gaming love
19:47 – Pixel art, nostalgia, and iconography

🔗 Links & Credits

🎯 Add a Touch of Class with Font Awesome Sharp Icons
🎙️ Meet Noah Jacobus, Icon Designer Extraordinaire
🕹️ Playdate – retro-style handheld game
🎵 Theme by Ronnie Martin
🎶 Music segues by Zach Malm
🎸 Outro track “Man is He Mega - GLBML” by Geoffrey Burch
🎛️ Audio mastering by Chris Enns at 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."

Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

Font Awesome's 2022 Year in Review with Matt and Jory Feb 14, 2023

Show notes

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:

--------------------------------
Timestamps

0:00:09

Conversation between Matt Johnson and Jory Rafael on the Inaugural Episode of Podcast Awesome

0:03:57

Review of Font Awesome's 2022 Accomplishments and Plans for 2023

0:05:54

The Benefits of Team Building Activities at Font Awesome

0:11:25

Exploring Nerdy Interests with Mike

0:13:03

Exploring Dungeons & Dragons, Nerd Show & Tell, and Traditional European Martial Arts

0:17:45

Conversation on Enjoying Hobbies and Passions

0:19:05

Discussing the 2022 Roundup and Plans for 2023

0:20:46

Font Awesome 6 Launch and Space Awesome

0:25:16

Exploring Space Awesome: How Ed learned VueJs

0:27:15

Exploring Font Awesome's Icon Sets and Recent Releases

0:31:54

The Origins of Font Awesome's Icon Wizard Feature (it was originally called, "F.A.R.T.S")

0:33:44

Collaboration between Font Awesome and the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to Create Humanitarian Icons
----------------------------
Links:

Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

Podcast Awesome Teaser Dec 21, 2022

Show notes

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!

Related Podcasts