
Podcast Awesome
On Podcast Awesome we talk to members of the Font Awesome team about icons, design, tech, business, and of course, nerdery.
šļø Podcast Awesome is your all-access pass into the creative engine behind Font Awesome ā the webās 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 ā with a healthy dose of 80s references and tech dad jokes.
š§ 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
š§ Come for the design wisdom, stay for the deep meme cuts and beautifully crafted icons.
Podcast Awesome
Appreciating the Virtuous Cycle of Nerdery with Mike Wilkerson
š§ From Walmart to Wobbly Circles: Mike Wilkerson Talks Code, Creativity, and Curves
In this episode of Podcast Awesome, host Matt Johnson chats with Mike Wilkerson, lead programmer at Font Awesome, about the beautiful overlap of programming, design tools, and quirky obsessions like the Marble Machine X.
Mike walks us through his journey from an unexpected start in tech (thanks, Walmart!) to becoming the mastermind behind the internal tools our design team uses every day. Ever wonder what makes an icon wiggle just right? Mikeās got a thing for circles, curves, and SVG perfection ā and he explains how even the simplest shapes require complex problem-solving.
š§ What We Cover in This Episode
- š ļø The origin story of Font Awesomeās custom design tools
- šµ The mystery of SVG circles and their natural imperfections
- š Mike's obsession with getting the "wobble" just right
- š§ His approach to mindfulness and how it improves his work
- š„ Why Martin Molinās Marble Machine X is his creative muse
- š” How loving your work can emerge from the mundane
ā±ļø Timestamps
- 00:00:36 ā Design Tools for Font Awesomeās Icon Team
- 00:07:24 ā SVG Circles That Just Wonāt Behave
- 00:07:48 ā The Art of Perfecting Imperfections
- 00:12:12 ā Mikeās Favorite Font Awesome Icons
- 00:16:57 ā Meditation as a Developer Superpower
- 00:19:30 ā Fanboying Over the Marble Machine X
- 00:23:40 ā Finding Joy in the Everyday Tasks
- 00:26:17 ā Loving Good Curves (In Code and Life)
Noteworthy Quotes
šÆ On Falling in Love with Code
āI didnāt really fall in love with computer programming until after college. I had to be at my desk at Walmart at 7:30 a.m. in a tie⦠so Iād wake up earlier just to get a couple hours of coding in for fun.ā
ā Mike Wilkerson
š ļø On Font Awesomeās Internal Design Tool (The Factory)
āThe factory is what I worked on this past split⦠It's the tool that our icon designers use to import their designs and convert them into the right format. Everything from naming and unicodes to search tags ā it all flows from there.ā
ā Mike Wilkersonā
šµ On Perfect Circles & SVG Wobble
āSome of the icons are supposed to be circles⦠but the design tool was approximating circles from the start. By the time they get to font glyphs, you end up with something that looks a little bit wobbly ā if you look close enough.ā
ā Mike Wilkersonā
š¼ On Marble Machine X & Creative Nerdiness
āItās both art and engineering⦠music and engineering. And Iāve lived in both of those worlds. So seeing all that come together in one project ā thatās pretty great.ā
ā Mike Wilkersonā
š” On What Makes Great Work
āThatās the thing about nerding out ā itās appreciating, caring, and loving what you do. That kind of love makes a better product⦠and it makes creating it more enjoyable.ā
ā Mike Wilkerson
āCircles gotta be curvy.ā ā Mike Wilkerson
š Links & Resources
- š¹ Marble Machine X by Martin Molin
- š¶ The Font Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin
- š§ Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions
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