Podcast Awesome

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
Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt  sits down with Font Awesome founder Dave Gandy to unpack what it really means to be a great employee and a great manager — without the “rockstar ninja unicorn” nonsense, micromanaging, or performative perks. Dave reframes the idea of a “lifestyle business” as a badge of honor (not a slight), explains why leadership matters more than the role you’re hired for, and shares practical ways to spot healthy management during interviews — plus what autonomy should actually look like inside a team that trusts each other.
Watch this episode on YouTube
🗒️ What We Cover in This Episode
💸 Why “lifestyle business” is often used as manipulation (and why it’s actually a badge of honor)
 🧭 The #1 thing to evaluate in a job interview: leadership (not the role)
 🧠 How to flip the interview script by asking better questions
 ⏱️ What micromanagement (“butt in seat” culture) really signals
 🚩 Why “rockstar / ninja / unicorn” language can be a culture red flag
 🔍 How to read “small signals” with inductive reasoning (not just deductive logic)
 📸 The photo wall story: how tiny rules reveal big cultural problems
 🧰 Why managing people is a craft (and how to learn it like one)
 📚 Books + frameworks Dave recommends (Lencioni, Working Genius, Shape Up)
 🧩 What healthy autonomy looks like in practice (and why “execute with excellence” is rare)
⏱️ Timestamps
0:00 - Cold Open: What Loyalty Really Costs
 0:23 - Welcome + What This Episode Covers
 0:53 - Lifestyle Business as a “Slight” (and the Trade-Offs)
 2:00 - Lifestyle Business Myth: Manipulation vs. Real Bottom Lines
 4:00 - Interview for Leadership: Why Your Boss Matters More Than the Role
 6:00 - Managers & Autonomy: Hiring Adults and Treating Them Like Adults
 8:00 - A “Butt in Seat” Culture (and Why It’s a Technical Leadership Smell)
 10:00 - Sussing Out Culture: How to Ask the Unaskable Questions
 12:00 - Lifestyle Business = Sanity (and Why Retention Is the Real Metric)
 14:00 - Hard Interview Questions That Reveal Leadership
 16:00 - Retention Without Perks: The Real “Perks” That Matter
 18:00 - When Life Happens: The Loyalty Moment That Costs Something
 22:00 - Rockstar / Ninja / Unicorn Language (and Flattery as a Red Flag)
 24:00 - Bad Interviewer Psychology: “Gotcha” Certainty vs. Real Confidence
 26:00 - Inductive vs Deductive Reasoning (and Why Nerds Miss the Signals)
 28:00 - The Photo Wall Story: Tiny Rules, Big Control Problems
 32:00 - Rockstar Culture Warning: Accountability and the “Rockstar Exception”
 34:00 - Interview Like Dating: Standards, Curiosity, and Connection
 36:00 - Botching Interviews When You Want It Too Much
 37:00 - Management Is a Craft (Not Just a Promotion)
 38:00 - Books & Frameworks: Lencioni + Working Genius + More
 42:00 - Organizational Health Signals (Trust, Conflict, Clarity)
 44:00 - Autonomy with Shape Up: Freedom Inside the Box
 46:00 - Wrap-Up + Closing Thoughts
🔗 Links & Resources
Patrick Lencioni / The Table Group
 Shape Up
 Font Awesome: 
🎶 The Font Awesome Theme Song – Composed by Ronnie Martin
🎸 Music Interstitials by Zach Malm 
🎬 Produced and edited by Matt Johnson with some extra video editing help from Isaac Chase
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Look Awesome: Solving Color Once and for All
Locking in the color palette for your project is one of those things that seems simple until you're actually doing it. Pick the wrong shade and your text is unreadable. Pick the right shade and it only works in Figma, not in your codebase, not in Tailwind, not anywhere that matters.
Dave Gandy — Font Awesome founder, Kickstarter legend, self-described Nantucket color enthusiast — has been quietly building a tool to fix this mess. It's called Look Awesome, and it tackles color from three angles at once: the technical side (WCAG contrast math), the artistic side (palettes that actually look good), and yes, the genetic side (turns out not everyone sees color the same way, and there's a 100-dot test to prove it).
This episode is an audio cut of a live demo Dave gave during the Build Awesome Kickstarter stream. He walks through how Look Awesome works, why he built it in under three weeks using modern AI tooling, and why he thinks this might be the most fun thing he's ever made. You'll also hear about NASA's brand guidelines, the color laws of Nantucket, and a binary search algorithm that finds the exact one shade of blue that satisfies both dark and light text contrast requirements.
Fair warning: this is a color tool, so if you want to actually see the thing, head over to the YouTube channel. The link is in the show notes.
What We Cover
What Look Awesome is and why it exists
The three challenges of color: technical, artistic, and genetic
The Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test and what it means for working with color
How the palette-building math actually works (including that binary search)
Theming once and getting it everywhere — Tailwind, Web Awesome, Claude's design.md, wherever
How Look Awesome fits into the Build Awesome workflow
Why Dave built this in under three weeks and what AI-assisted Build Week looked like
The Nantucket color palette demo (10 seconds, one URL)
Try It Look Awesome is live now at look.awesome.me. Dave wants to hear what's working — not just the bugs. Drop him a note at dave@awesome.me.
Want to support the broader project? The Build Awesome Kickstarter is still running at build.awesome.me.

Watch the full demo from the livestream! youtube.com/live/XBMSvupE7Bc?si=3Ow2B1I4pOAYnsb 
Credits
Hosted, produced and edited by Matt Johnson
Featuring Dave Gandy and Zach (from the Build Awesome livestream)
Theme song by Ronnie Martin
Music interstitials by Zach Malm
Video editing by Isaac Chase
Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

AI makes it easier to build almost anything. So why does that make the job harder?
In this episode, Matt sits down with Font Awesome founder Dave Gandy and engineer Travis Chase to get past the hype and into the real day-to-day of building with AI. The conversation covers what's actually changing on the team, where AI falls short, and what human skills matter more now than they did before.
If you're a designer, developer, or anyone trying to figure out where you fit in a world where your output can suddenly go 10x — this one's worth your time. Dave and Travis don't pretend the answers are simple. They also don't pretend the concerns aren't real.
Fair warning: Dave also makes a case for revisiting waterfall development. It's more convincing than it has any right to be.

What We Cover
Why producing more means your quality bar has to get sharper, not looser
The discernment problem — when you can build anything, how do you decide what's worth building?
Why saying no is now a more important skill than ever
The strongest AI concerns Dave and Travis actually take seriously (energy, training data ethics, governance)
Why AI seems to help people become more of who they already are
How to stay curious and useful during a major technology transition without chasing every squirrel

Timestamps
0:00 Cold open — from low-level to strategy
0:38 Intro
1:30 Where AI falls short right now
2:00 Quality control when output explodes
2:30 Taste, responsibility, and Jory's point at the snuggle
3:00 The discernment problem and snacktivities
4:20 Simplicity means saying no more than yes
5:30 Chasing waterfalls — does waterfall development make a comeback?
6:00 The strongest anti-AI arguments worth taking seriously
6:45 Energy, ethics, and training data consent
8:00 Technology's evolution and the genie that's out of the bottle
9:00 The Industrial Revolution farmer analogy
9:45 Superheroes, supervillains, and hiring for character first
10:20 Two ditches: navigating between idealism and cynicism
11:10 Rev share and what the world should look like
11:45 Governance, compromise, and garbage design
13:30 Washing machines and making more clean water
14:00 Guiding principles for using AI internally
15:00 Company behaviors as an AI framework: curious, humble, adventurous
16:00 AI helps people become more of who they are
16:45 AI will ask people to operate at a higher level
18:00 Refusing to engage is the riskiest move of all
19:00 We need critical voices — and we need them in the room
20:00 Echo chambers, bad data, and the water story
21:30 The world is hopeful — spend your life in wonder
22:30 Home prices, colonizing planets, and the leap to the real world
23:00 Outro

Credits
Hosted by Matt Johnson
Featuring Dave Gandy and Travis Chase
Produced and edited by Matt Johnson
Theme song by Ronnie Martin
Music interstitials by Zach Malm
Video editing by Isaac Chase
🔗 Font Awesome: https://fontawesome.com 
🔗 Check out episode one of the conversation! https://www.podcastawesome.com/2092855/episodes/19065993-build-week-what-we-made-part-1-with-dave-travis
🔗 Podcast Awesome: https://podcastawesome.com
#PodcastAwesome #FontAwesome #AI #DesignAndDevelopment #TechEthics #SoftwareDevelopment
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