Behind the Pixels: Designing Icons the Font Awesome Way

Podcast Awesome

🎧 The Fine Art of Structure & Chaos — Inside Font Awesome’s Creative Process

What happens when you mix dinosaur icons, brain science, and a meticulous-yet-messy creative workflow? You get a peak behind the pixel curtain with icon maestros Jory Raphael and Noah Jacobus! In this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt chats with the duo about their icon design process — equal parts strategy and serendipity.

From high-level sketches to final pixel perfection, Jory and Noah reveal how they balance structure with creative chaos using tools like Figma and a well-worn sketchpad. Along the way, we explore productivity hacks, the rhythm of creative flow, and yes — dinosaur design drama. 🦖💡

🎙️ What We Cover in This Episode:

• 🧠 Icon design as both art and science
• ✏️ Why sketching still matters in a digital world
• 🦕 The joy and struggle of designing dinosaur icons
• 🛠️ Why Figma makes their workflows less "rawr" and more "refined"
• 🧬 What brain science and music have to do with creativity
• 🗓️ Rebuilding your schedule to support creative energy
• 💥 How pressure impacts the design process—for better or worse

⏱️ Timestamps

• [00:01:23] Design process
• [00:05:01] High level sketching
• [00:07:45] Figma for interface design
• [00:10:39] Designing dinosaur icons
• [00:14:08] Messy creative process
• [00:17:13] Creative process and productivity
• [00:20:31] Brain science in music
• [00:23:38] Creating a new schedule
• [00:26:52] Creative process and pressure

🎯 Top Noteworthy Quotes from Jory & Noah on Design Process

On Messy Creativity:

“The creative process in general is so by its very nature, amorphous and all over the place.” — Jory Raphael

On Collaborating Across the Fence:

“Sometimes I will design something, take a kind of a first pass at it, kick it across the fence to Noah, and he'll go in and tweak it and add, improve it generally... it's kind of collaborative when it needs to be and isn't when it doesn't need to be.” — Jory Raphael

On Tool-Based Sketching:

“My sketching process is like digitally drawing right in the program itself.” — Noah Jacobus

On Dinosaur Design Woes:

“The Tyrannosaurus... it’s not done yet... you have to find a way. Like, you can bend, or is it squatting? Does it look like it's pooping instead of standing up?” — Jory Raphael

On Visual Rhythm in Workspaces:

“I often will put a movie or a TV show on my little side monitor... just something I can kind of pay half attention to... helps me just get into a zone where I can draw.” — Jory Raphael

On Brain Science and Structure:

“There’s got to be brain science to this stuff for sure.” — Matt Johnson
“We just draw small pictures, Matt.” — Jory Raphael

On Icon Design Pressure:

“We’re not on the hook to force anything to work. It can be much more freeform.” — Noah Jacobus

On Growing Process Needs:

“What works when there's a smaller group of people doesn't work necessarily as well when there are more... We put in as much process as we need to.” — Jory Raphael

🔗 Links & Resources

The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin

Audio mastering by Chris Enns and Lemon Productions

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