Podcast Awesome

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: feedback@fontawesome.com
Font Awesome: https://fontawesome.com
Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

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
Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

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
Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

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
Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!

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
Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!