Welcome to podcast. Awesome. We'll reach out about icons, design tech, business, and nerdery with members of the FA awesome team.


I am your host, Matt Johnson, and today is another episode of The Nerd Show and Tell. And we finally tracked down Travis Chase. Yes, the one and only co-founder of Font. Awesome.

So what do you get when you mix a love of icons?

Programming old school phone systems and everyone's favorite space Western. You know the one that came out in the seventies, that franchise. Right.

That's right. You get Travis Chase, co-founder of Font awesome.

Star Wars, unlimited card shark.

The kind of nerd you definitely want on your trivia team

In this edition of The Nerd Show and Tell, I finally wrangled Travis into the recording booth, or I mean basically the side office.

From his early side hustles and web design all the way [00:01:00] through his experience, uh, that he and Dave had going to Y Combinator at the time of the launch of fa Awesome. Five.

Travis dishes up

stories with heart humor.

Enough tech nostalgia to crash

a dial up connection.

So get comfy and get ready to have a nice fireside chat with Mr. Happy go. Lucky Travis Chase.

Matt: Travis Chase. We finally roped you in to a nerd. Show and tell. Yes, you did. We, we've tried to do this, um, probably for a couple years and. I remember one time I called you, ~um, we, we were doing a,~ we trying to do the podcast remote and I called you here at this office and it did not work. No, it was not you, you were having, um, interweb problems that day and then we never were able to reschedule it.

So here we are. I'm your white. Well, yeah. Um, so we've heard from you and Dave a good bit just talking about the history of Phon Osman stuff, but. We always want to give folks [00:02:00] a, an opportunity to come on the nerd show and tell Yeah. And tell us a little bit about their background and, um, and their life.

And we, we've heard some of that stuff, but, um, we can't get enough. Um, we can't get enough, man. Okay. So we just, we gotta know. Inquiring mind's. Gotta know. ~Um, so yeah, we usually talk about. How did folks get into tech? Like how did you, ~how did you wind up here a little bit about what are the stuff that you're nerding out about?

And I know that you've got plenty to say about all that. Yeah. So how did you get into the, the world of, of tech and like what, what were your interests? Um, 'cause you, you weren't going to No, actually we were planning to go into tech initially. Yeah. 

Travis: When we were in high school, Dave was actually more of the tech one and I was probably more the artist.

So I was gonna go to art school. Mm-hmm. Um. And I had an art teacher tell me, uh, I wasn't creative enough and that, oh, that stings man, it, it, it did sting at the time, but he was right. Like when I got older, I appreciated the comment. I didn't really appreciate it at the time. Obviously I was a young kid, um, but he was right as far as [00:03:00] like just pure art.

Mm-hmm. But what I was able to do is turn that art into like web design. Mm-hmm. And so. I went to college, I was gonna be an accountant. My dad was a accountant. I was gonna be an accountant, and I took my first business accounting class. I was like, Hmm, I don't think I wanna do this. Yeah. Uh, I wanna try something different.

And so I changed my major to marketing, and that is my degree is a marketing with a multimedia design. Okay. But I started working for a, uh, I worked for a local startup that was kind of, this is going on. I wanna say 20 plus years ago. I mean, it's, it's kind of crazy for me to say that, but we were doing like internet access for people, like you dial in that kinda thing.

And then we started building, um, I started noticing like, uh, there's this HTML and the web kind of becoming more prevalent. And I was like, you know what? Businesses need webpages. And so I kind of pitched the owner of the company to like, why don't we start building, you know, webpages for businesses. So like, you know, we would do, [00:04:00] I started, I bought, I went to Books A million.

I bought a big thick, I even remember it was like HTML five book that was like 700 pages and just devoured it and started building webpage and I would do the graphics and that whole kind of thing. Um, so I really got into that and when I left that company, I, I went to another company that built telephony.

Devices. And so like if your kid missed school, they're the ones that would call you and say, because legally is required for schools to call and say that your student's absent. Um, but to have someone do that, like you don't really wanna pay someone to do that all the time. So they built tele solutions to do that for you so you could record a message, send it out to students, that kind of stuff.

And I started working there as their web designer. Um, I was part-time because I was gonna college, uh, as I was finishing up college. They're like, well, we, we don't really see paying, you know, a full-time web design 'cause that still wasn't a thing then. So like, how about you're not 

Matt: sure if they needed a website yet, 

Travis: right?

You weren't not sure if they needed a web designer 

Matt: Yeah. To do this 

Travis: kind of stuff. Would it be, is it, is it technical? Is it marketing? What is this? Um, so they said, Hey, would you be interested in becoming a programmer? And I had started and I was finished up like, I think my [00:05:00] senior year or junior year or something at the time.

I'm like, sure, let's do that. And so I started taking some CIS classes as electives in college. Wasn't gonna switch my major because, uh, they had older technology wasn't really that interested and. And so I started programming and I remember it's still my favorite, uh, programming, uh, project. They sat me down since we were a telephony company.

They had a dialogic voice board. So it was a voice board that basically had telephone lines, could connect to telephone network, and you could make it do stuff. You could make it answer or call. You could call, you could, uh, listen on the line, you could do all these kind of things. And the company had built their own programming language to interact with this, this hardware.

And they said, install the hardware. And create me an answering machine. And then here's voice application language as well. It's called vow. Here's the vow manual, build me an answering machine. Still my favorite project all time. Yeah. I'll never forget that. 'cause it, it basically awakened the love of programming, uh, for me.

And so that's what I did. And I, I spent, I think, I think a week I sat down by a senior dev there, [00:06:00] and I spent a week and I would just prototype out and I would sit there and iterate, and iterate and iterate until I had this really fancy answering machine. 

Matt: I mean, it seems there, there, there would be a lot of steps in detail, like if this, then this, then this and this.

Yeah. I mean, there, there's a lot there. Yeah. 

Travis: Yeah. And it's like, okay, well how long do you wait after the beep, right? Mm-hmm. Do you, 'cause you can listen on the line for voice, but how long do you listen for voice? How long do you do certain things? And so, um, yeah. So I built that answering machine and, and from there I just got into programming.

I just started devouring, um, all sorts of. Books and I mean, really books at the time, uh, the web was still pretty infant, uh, so it wasn't like a lot of YouTube or anything like that to, so you, you learn through reading. So I just read a ton. Mm-hmm. And, and just really got into development. And so it was more self-taught, it was more guided through, uh, the people I worked with.

And by the time I graduated college, it was like I already had tons of business classes. Mm-hmm. I wasn't gonna switch my major and to go into CIS because the stuff they were teaching was even. Uh, was, [00:07:00] was co ball RPG, some of this older stuff that I just wasn't interested in. Um, and so just finished out my major and then I started programming for that company.

Uh, I wound up managing the programming department there and then just kinda left the, you know, just went through my career from different, different companies programming. But that's how I got into it. Uh, was gonna be an art student and wind up being a programmer. 

Matt: It's a great confluence of like different things, especially now considering what, what Font Awesome does. It's so like, uh, you know, like a design forward. Tech company, right? Yep. Software company. So it, it like matches perfectly all those different skills. So all the while you have some buddies behind the scenes, folks you've been friends with for years. Mm-hmm. Um, including Dave and Rob and, and some others.

Um, and we've heard ~a little bit from, well, maybe~ a lot from Dave about like the early days and how you guys kind of got together. Um, so from kind of your vantage point. ~You and Dave, like, ~were you guys sort of intersecting professionally a little bit? Well, we would do those years or, 

Travis: uh, like when he, he was in [00:08:00] college, MIT and I, I stayed, uh, to Marymount high school sweetheart and go to college locally.

Um, but we, we, we stayed in touch and he had, he had one project. He's like, Hey, he's working for the, he's has working for his organization and they need a, a website built. And they didn't want to use PHP at the time they wanted to use Pearl. So they paid me to basically write a Hypertech engine, like PHP, but write it in Pearl.

Um, it's pretty slow because it wasn't really designed for that. But I wrote this, this hyper text engine that basically allowed you to write, um. Inject Pearl Pearl commands or scripts or like little things, much like a SP, what PSP does, that kinda stuff. And, and generate HML on the outside. Um, so I did that project and they paid me, it was for his organization and we just kind, we always kept in touch.

'cause we had been friends since, oh geez, I don't even know now. Sixth grade if not more. Whenever he moved in and we lived a, a block apart, then we became friends. And so we'd been, so we, we kept in, in contact and um, so we'd do little projects here and there and then. What was it? I had worked for some different [00:09:00] places.

He was working for different places. He decided to. Uh, get his education degree. He was gonna be a teacher. Um, and, uh, teaching in the way he tells it to me is teaching at Near City Boston. That was really tough. And so, you know, when he, when he got out of his master's program, he's like, Hmm, maybe I get back into tech.

Yeah. You know, so he started working for a startup and I had to been doing some startups at the time here locally, uh, with some local folks and Rob and I had connected through that. Um, we actually worked for a place called Gestalt that was bought by Accenture. So we had reconnected 'cause we went to high school together.

Um, so we kind of always kind of kept in touch. And while we were working for Gestalt, I mean, after we left Gestalt, Dave was working for a place called ris and he contacted me and said, Hey, uh, would you know love for you to come on board and help us, you know, this kind of stuff. And so he talked to his folks.

They came down and met me. Wasn't quite sure. Uh, I started talking to Rob. I said, okay, Rob, if you do this, I'll do this. And so Rob and I both started working for Kyro. Okay. Uh, together for this medical startup. And we kind of [00:10:00] all reconnected in a work situation there. And so I. We kind of stayed, you know, in touch off and on.

That was probably the first time we all started to work together in one kind of startup, startupy kind of thing. Mm-hmm. And then from Kyro is when we decided to do fun. Awesome. And I think he told the story before, but we were kinda like, listen, whoever can raise the money, uh, will do that. Whatever that thing is, you know, create our own company the 

Matt: way that we want to do 

Travis: it.

Yep. So through all, like I've worked for Fortune five hundreds, I've worked for startups and kind of kind of started getting the idea of what kind of company I wanted to run. If I were to run one, how would I wanna structure it? Uh, a lot of it's influenced by three seven signals and rework. It doesn't have to be crazy at work.

All these kind of things there readings some of my own interactions in like a Fortune 500 situation and. How I wanted to do things differently, um, how I wanted to write software differently. And, and, and they've had very similar thoughts on how he would run a company, how he'd wanna build software, you know, being designed first, thinking of the user first and all these kind of things.

And we just kind of really aligned there [00:11:00] and, and then through FAU and we were able to, uh, give it a go. Mm-hmm. And the funny thing about that is, you know, we, we had worked for a year on f Awesome. And we built Ford. Awesome. Um. Maybe unfortunately named, you know, 'cause we, we get support saying, Hey, you guys are ripping off on awesome.

We're like, no, same company. Yeah, we're the same company. Uh, but, uh, so we, you know, we were trying that it wasn't quite, it was growing, but it wasn't growing enough to where we could work full time on it. And so that's when we, you guys were like, 

Matt: wait ahead everybody. And you're like, what is the coolest thing we could do?

And folks are starting to catch up now, right? Yep. And 

Travis: so that's when we basically said, you know what? Let's apply to yc. Uh, let's see what, what we can learn there. And. Funny enough, I remember telling my wife, I said, you know, if we get in, I would have to live there. And you know, I got married young, so I, you know, I had never had a roommate other than my wife.

You know, I had never lived on my own except for when I was married, except for maybe a couple months before we got married. Um, so that was all gonna be a new experience. I'm like, but well, we won't get in. Like, this is super hard to do. Like there's just no way. And [00:12:00] I remember when we went there and we got the first interview and they're like, okay, well.

We sit out there and you, you kind of, you wait while another person goes in and about halfway through then they let you go. And we just kept waiting and we just kept waiting. And we were like, we're gonna go up to wine country. And like just, we did our best and we're just gonna enjoy the rest of the trip.

And they're like, Hey, can you come back? And we're like, well, is that good or is that bad? I guess that can't be bad. Yeah. Know if it's good, but it can't be bad. So it's like, okay, hey, they're, you know, remember telling my wife they're having us back. Probably still won't get in, but it's pretty cool that we're getting a second shot, you know, whatever that is.

And so I remember going into the interview and. Uh. It just, everything clicked. Like what answers he didn't have, I had, what answers I didn't have. He had, and then when him and Kevin Hale got into like design philosophy and they were just, they were just pinging off one another, it was like, wow, this is pretty cool.

Like, what if we don't get in and nothing happens with f. Awesome. It doesn't, I mean, we, we did everything that we could. We could do. Yeah. And. I remember. So after that we're we, our local friend, uh, who really helped us a lot, Ryan Pierce, uh, helped prepare us [00:13:00] and he'd just been through it all. Uh, we're like, okay, we're gonna go get some Mexican food.

We're gonna go get some tacos. We're gonna just chill. We did everything we could. Yeah. And I remember getting the call and him saying, we got in. I'm like, wait, what? 

Matt: Yeah, 

Travis: we got in. And so I remember I had, I had to step outside. I had to call my wife and I was like, okay, well. We got in, I've gotta live in California for three months.

Yeah. Right. So that's how fun. Awesome. Yeah. That's how fun. Awesome. Started. And where I, I thought it was, was really strange. We, uh, the next day you have to go and they have this big kind of orientation, like, hey, you know, this is what to expect, all this kind of stuff. And they're gonna, then they're gonna go down the line and there's probably, I can't remember in our batch, but 80 plus companies, maybe a little more.

Um, and you just gotta do like a little whatever, like a little, and then I just went down the line, and this time I happened to sit on the right of Dave and it was kind of snaking around to me and I'm like, oh no, he's so much better than this, than I am. But it, but it comes to me. So I, I stand up and I said, Hey, uh, you know, I'm Travis Chase.

This is Dave Gandy. Uh, we've created FAU and we're here to take to the next [00:14:00] level and we gotta a standing ovation. We're like, nice. This is really strange. And it came to find out like all these people, which were small, uh, startup people that were mostly tech focused, they knew who we were, Uhhuh. And so it's like, wow, this is kind of crazy.

And then it's just kind of grown from there until what it is today, which is still blows my mind. 

Matt: Oh man, I love it. It's so great. Yeah, it's, it's funny when I know that you're just about to tell the story, I'm like. Do I have this legend in my head and an idea, and then I hear you tell it again. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not good. It's, yeah, it seems 

Travis: like, it seems like it was, seems like a legend to us. We didn't know how to handle that. Like we didn't know. Yeah. You know, and then people would come up to us and like, Hey, can our developers meet you? Could they, could they get, you know, talk to you? And we're like, I guess like, we're just ordinary people.

But Yeah. You know, had a little, you know, microaction of nerd fame. But yeah, it's, you know, it's kind of funny. And even to this day. You know, I remember going out to, um, I was, we were on vacation with the family and we were at Universal and I think we were going to hog Hogwarts Castle. And this guy [00:15:00] saw my fun, awesome shirt.

'cause that's basically all I wear is fun, awesome gear. I was like, Hey, fun, awesome. You know, I was like, oh. So I, you know, I always like to try to talk to folks if they use it. I'm like, Hey, you use fun. Awesome. I's like, yeah. So I worked there and really, I'm like, yeah. I said, I, I co-founded with my buddy and, and we really glad that, that you use our product.

That kind of stuff. And then just. 

Matt: Yeah, 

Travis: really? I'm like, yeah. He looked me up on LinkedIn and he connected me on LinkedIn and he saw me next. He, he, he was really, you know, he was kind of dumbfounded that, you know, we were, we were Fawn. Awesome. You know, it's like still weird to me when that happens, but it's really appreciative.

So many folks love the product that they just, you know, they associate so many good things with Fawn. Awesome. 

Matt: Yeah, for sure. You know, it, it's funny, I always hear Dave talking about. Like icons, like, we're not like changing the world here, but you know, it's like one niche thing that content creators, developers, designers, they can use it and they know it's just gonna work, you know?

Yep. It just works kind of like one of our trademark things, um, and people appreciate that. So it is a small thing. It's like people aren't, [00:16:00] um. It, it is a small aspect of the things that they're building, but it's really important too. Yeah. And you need it to, to just work. And I, I just love that there's a place for, for folks to build that niche thing and you can create it the way that you want to.

Um, and kind of zooming out from there, like as a person joining the company a couple years ago, once you guys kinda got your legs under you or whatever it, and having been in startup and tech companies before. My experience ~of the, um, ~of the culture, there was always just such a grind. Mm-hmm. You know, and as a content person, I felt like I was sort of always on the, the outside of that sort of looking in.

But I was like, that's a what a horrible way to live, man.~ Like, and I,~ I just appreciate, ~you know, ~in a holistic way. ~Like~ font Awesome. Is about. A couple friends started this company and they knew what kind of company they wanted to build, or at least the kind of company they didn't want to be. Um, and it sort of permeates everything [00:17:00] that, that Fawn Awesome is.

And I just, I've always sensed, ~um,~ from the time that Mike Wilkerson was like, Hey, you should do you wanna do some contract work? I'm like, I'm done with tech man, I don't want to do this stuff anymore. And he's like, no, no, no. I think this is kind of different, you know? Um, but just getting a sense that there's like a holistic thing, a, a philosophy of how to do business that just kind of works and Yeah.

I mean, 

Travis: for us it, it, some of it just came out of, I mean, I don't know how much, um, you know, age life circumstances play in those choices. I'm sure a lot for us it was because, uh, we were a little bit older when we did this. Uh, we both had families with young kids and we just couldn't afford to. Grind like you can when you're younger.

Like, you know, I, I get it. Like if maybe I was 20 when I did this and didn't have a family Yeah. I could just grind because I mean, what else would I do? I don't know. Right. Um, but, you know, I'm coaching my, you know, coaching my son's soccer games and gonna my daughter's cheerleading. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Travis: Um, you know, and [00:18:00] didn't have time to grind.

So it was one of those things where we had to figure out a way we could maximize, um. Our effort in the time we did have, you know, and so that's where a lot of, uh, philosophy from 37 signals come in because they're very much of the same vein. And that just really resonated after working at different places.

Yeah, seeing how different folks did it. And I'm not saying like we have the only answer. We just have our answer. And that's what brought what 37 Signal says, like, you know. There is an alternative way. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it or that it's even right. It's just your way. And so we wanted to build our way, and our way was, listen, we have to maximize the time we're here.

Um, so let's remove all kind of distractions, you know, really focus on the important things that we want to accomplish. And that way we can go home and do the other things in our life, you know, and not make work. Our, you know, works on our whole life. We've got families, we've got young kids, we got all this kind of stuff.

So how do we make work a big part of our life, but not all of our life? And, and that's just kind of how we. Try to figure out how to adjust and, and make the company work that way. And then we wanted to hire folks [00:19:00] who wanted the same thing. Mm-hmm. You know, we wanted to make sure, at least with, uh, the culture we're trying to establish are folks that believe the same way.

You know, it doesn't have to be right, but, you know, coming here it's right for us. It's right for us. Yeah. And, and everybody gets that and works towards that. And so they, what they try to do again is like during the time they have, let's maximize, let's not, let's not waste time. Let's maximize, let's get as much done for the customers as we can when we're working.

But then when we're done, we put it down and we go enjoy other things. And, and, and our belief too is when you enjoy other things a lot while we do these nurturing tales is because when you get passionate about other things, even if they're not even related to tech. You will find something that you can bring back in.

You will find some piece and go, oh, it inspires me to do this. Or, oh, you know, if I applied the same thing in whatever, to fonts or icons or web components or whatever. Websites themselves. With 11, you'll find something that you can apply here. And so we, we very much believe being a holistic person and having different interests, that kinda stuff actually benefits [00:20:00] the company as well.

Yeah. And so it's just kind of this, given this, this, what we hope to have is a very, uh, holistic, lovely give and take between folks that work here, what they give us and what we give them. 

Matt: Yep. And we always put a, you know. The, the namesake of this whole series, you know, nerd show and tell, we, we so value folks like sort of sharing their, their interests and things.

And we're in the middle of a snuggle, um, now, which we've, you know, if that sounds weird, you can go back and listen to, so it's, we, we go into length about what, what that is. Um, but it's just sort of our company meetup that we do twice a year and we really put a high priority on folks. Sharing their nerd and sharing their interests.

And it really is true that even if it doesn't directly relate to our work, creating an environment where we're sort of celebrating that stuff together, it just creates a nice vibe. Yeah. So that you feel like. And when, when you feel good, like you're clearheaded and you do good work, you know? Yeah. So it's all sort of connected, 

Travis: right?

Yep. That's what, that's what we think, ~what we ~

Matt: ~believe.~ 

So, [00:21:00] so speaking of which, outside of work, I mean, you are a man of many nerd nerd doms and, uh, so what, I mean, there's a lot of things I'm sure you could like shoot from the hit from. What are you nerding out about right now? 

Travis: All right, so I have like my personality, uh, I always, always have to put guards on it, but I get.

When I get into something, you can ask any of my friends. You can ask my family. When I get into something, I get into it. There's no like 50%. Yeah. Uh, so I keep it to like two or three things. Yeah. Like, I just can't get into too many things. Recently though, uh, definitely have gone down, uh, the rabbit hole, the love, the passion that is Star Wars Unlimited, which is a Star Wars, uh, trading card game.

Matt: Nice. 

Travis: Uh, I was a Star Wars kid. Uh, I remember. I don't know it, see, it's in my memory. That I saw, like, so Star Wars came in 1977. I was also born in 1977, but I remember seeing it in the theater. So it must have, and I know it had some runs in the theater after 1977. Mm-hmm. And I remember my [00:22:00] dad taking me, I have this in my memory and I'm pretty sure it was the original Star Wars.

Maybe it was Empire Strikes Back, I don't remember. But anyway, I remember him taking me, uh, to the theaters to watch this movie. And ever since then, I have just loved the story, the universe. Um, and, and like when people say like, Hey, you need to watch Breaking Bad. Probably a great show. Not for me. I'm a Star Wars kid.

Yeah. And when I say I'm a Star Wars kid, they're like, oh, I get it. Right. I, I like good versus Evil Hope co, you know, conquering darkness. Yeah. Not a lot of gray. It's sure. You know, I want it just, I'm a Star Wars kid. Yeah. You know, and anything Star Wars, I devour. You know, the movies, the shows, uh, varying qualities.

But, uh, they recently released a trading card game and it has really excellent mechanics and you can collect all your, your favorite characters and you can play them and yeah, it's gone. I've gone really deep on that. So, uh, actually another guy, uh, that works here at Emanuel, we are going in July to play at the Galactic Championships in Las Vegas.

Nice. Oh man. To the next level. [00:23:00] So. Probably won't do real well, but we're gonna have a lot of fun doing it. Oh yeah. You know, and, and part of that is, you know, from the nerd show and tell, we were talking about earlier, you know, I started thinking, okay, what tools? So I started, uh, on my own time, there's an open source, uh, project that actually builds like an online trainer or online platform.

So you could, uh, develop X test X, you can help create the meta, that kinda stuff. And I, I started, uh, writing some code for, because, uh, now my day to day job, I don't get to write as much code as I used to. Um, just the natural evolution of, of growing a company. And so I was like, okay, well this would be fun.

So I started writing some code and, and, and creating cards for it, that kind of stuff. And then started thinking, you know, what other tools could there be? And so I started thinking, man, what if you had this really excellent AI trainer, like old school chessmaster, like back in the day, I remember having chessmaster on the computer and you could really get better at chess by playing and you could crank up the level of difficulty and it would, you know, you could really start honing your chess game.

And I thought, man, what if you had that for Star Wars and Star Wars Unlimited and. You know, that kinda started like, well then how we use AI and other things we hear, we, you know, we [00:24:00] do here. Like, you know, AI is definitely gonna start eating the world, so how do we use it in our day-to-day work that, you know, is a force multiplier for us?

Um, and, you know, so, you know, just messing with the Star Wars stuff kind of brought that passion into like, well, how do we apply some of those same principles into what we do here? 

Matt: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I love how all that stuff is connected because there was a conversation in sort of our all. All team like meeting, we're like, okay, you know, the way that tech is going is not maybe the what we all would prefer, right?

But you know what? It's the reality of the world that we live in and how, how can we make this work for us? How can we get on top of it? And I love how all these worlds like, come together. Yeah. And I mean, that's just a prime example of that, right? Yep. You're using your interests, um, and you're seeing where it's like connecting with, ~uh, you know.~

How we need to take things into the next level here at the company. And it all, it all informs it. It's, it's awesome. Okay. 

So, uh, we always have to get into [00:25:00] icon stuff. Yep. Um, so, okay. Favorite icon Go icons. I don't know. Could be icon packed. It's, 

Travis: it's probably gonna be. Oh man, it's probably tied between two.

One is just the old school coffee cup. I'm a super big, really deep into coffee and that just kinda like when we had to pick an icon to kind of represent ourselves a different swag or like a hat or something like that. I'd always pick the coffee cup. Um, but I also can't forget the retro camera. That kind of kicked it all off.

That's good. Um, that's a great, it's a great icon. Has a great story behind it. Yeah. Um, or even the envelope that is used. Yeah, everywhere that is, uh, kind of modeled off of Dave's wedding envelopes, imitation envelopes. Oh, nice. Yeah. So those are always up there. But yeah, definitely the, the coffee cup and then, um, any of the, uh, space related, uh, icons that are very generic, like laser sword.

Matt: Yeah. If, if you like, like space westerns. Yeah. 

Travis: [00:26:00] Um, space operas, you know, there's, there's some icons for you out there. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. 

Matt: Uh, is there an icon pack? Or a theme of some sort that is not in the FAU canon that needs to be 

Travis: there. Ooh, that is a good one. Oh man. Uh, I mean, I, I, I, uh, finagle my way into getting some of the DD icons at already.

Um, a second version of that would be nice. Um, maybe some Star Wars and Linda type, uh, icons would be okay. It would be quite nice. I don't know. Or don't 

Matt: you mean, uh, space Western? Space Western, yeah, 

Travis: space Western icons, uh, put in there would, uh, would also be quite nice. Uh, that, that'd be interesting. Um, but man, we have so many, I don't, I mean, I can't even keep up with how many icons we have now.

So even if I said something, I'd probably go find it. We have so many, especially with plus now Pro Plus, uh, these other even styles, like it just continues to grow. So. It could already be there. Who knows? 

Matt: Oh, totally. Yeah. I'm always, um, on the website looking for something like, [00:27:00] that's a delightful icon.

Like something I hadn't seen before. Like, man, those guys are just so great at this. 

Matt: Well thanks for taking some time on the Nerd Show and tell. 

Travis: Yeah, anytime you can, you can rope me in again. Alright. Alright. 

And there you have it folks. You have bonafide truth from Travis himself that you can start off as sort of a. Creative guy then dodge accounting, and wind up co-founding one of the Internet's most famous, I call 'em tool kits. Who knew?

Travis reminds us that you can build at a company and and work somewhere where you don't have to burn yourself out.

And that nerdy passion projects, (even, I guess Star Wars [00:28:00] Unlimited, can actually fuel the vibe at work.

thanks for joining us on Podcast Awesome today. And if you wanna make Travis even more internet famous, than he already is, maybe share this episode with a friend. As always, podcast awesome. Was produced and edited by this guy right here, Matt Johnson. The podcast awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin.

The music interstitials were composed by Zach Mom and audio mastering was done by Chris Ends at Lemon Productions.