Welcome to Podcast Awesome. Where we chat about icons, design, tech, business, and nerdery with members of the. Font awesome team, as well as the broader awesome verse. 

I am your host, Matt Johnson, 

 Today we've got Francis making a debut appearance on podcast. Awesome. Alongside returning champ Ed to talk about some fresh workflow smoothing goodies that we just shipped. 

We're diving into three updates that are small but mighty. Uh, one of them being the PNG downloads, and you can download a PNG right from an icon page, and you don't have to deal with any of those pesky file converters. It's quite handy. A slick new color picker that previews icon colors across search and category pages, 

and the delightfully unserious user blender, a kind of a toy, as Ed puts it, that it lets you mix and match heads and bodies to create your own custom user icon and save them to your kit. And if you're more of a show me, don't tell me kind of person, we got you covered. There's an extended video version on YouTube with quick little visual demos so that you can see everything in action. Alright, let's get into it with Ed and Francis.

Matt: Francis and Ed, thanks for coming on podcast. Awesome. Francis, I think this is your debut on podcast. Awesome. So welcome, welcome.

frances: Glad to be here.

Matt: And.

Ed: Yeah.

Matt: I know he's popped in a few times and, we had a discussion, it's probably been a couple years now, talking about your experience, learning view by creating space.

Awesome. That was fun.

Ed: And then I think we also [00:02:00] talked about icon Wizard a couple years ago.

Matt: Yep. And we have a new feature that we'll talk about today that is sort of adjacent to the Icon Wizard. That's pretty fun. but we just had a, a new release and you guys have been working on some stuff behind the scenes that are, some features that are kind of exciting and, ed suggested, Hey, why don't, why don't we hop on a call and talk about it?

So here we are. Ed, there

Ed: There were three,

Matt: things that you mentioned, that, I think would be worthy of conversation. We've got a new color picker. got, 

it's similar to the Icon Wizard, but, 

user blender

Ed: Mm-hmm.

Matt: and,

frances: Blend your own user icon.

Matt: That's right.

Yeah. And, uh, folks can download PNGs of the, the icons now. So maybe we

Ed: We start with that,

Matt: mean, that

Ed: that seems, yeah.

Matt: and straightforward enough. So if, if folks wanted to download, icons in like a desktop type application or, they wanted to download the file. They were kinda limited there.

Can you tell me a little bit about that and how this feature came about?

Ed: So, um, we've been offering, SVG downloads for a long time. you can just go and there's a little button in the top right hand corner to download SVG. And we've been getting a number of requests through support for, Downloading PNGs, you can take an SVG and convert it to a p and g with a third party tool.

 but that's kind of a, you know, it's an extra step and it's kind of a pain to do sometimes. So we just, added right next to that SVG download button, there is now a p and g download. 

frances: for each icon. Like when you're looking, when you're searching for an icon, you find the right icon. You can just grab it right there. Like p and g's are part of our big bulk download, but sometimes you don't wanna download the whole package just to grab one quick icon that you've already found. So it's, it's pretty nice convenience.

Matt: Is there [00:04:00] a particular reason why people would want to? Download A-P-P-N-G 

 is it like a

Ed: $1 or file size or

Matt: just a

Ed: preference.

 it probably just depends on the application of what you're doing. Um.

frances: Yeah, I think there's different settings of like what people have their code doing or maybe there are other icons that they're using, and they wanna keep the format similar. there might be design situations in which you want a p and g instead, so it's a nice option to have.

Matt: We're all about those options. Allowing people to create the, the way that they want to with the tools, their tools of choice. So that's great. 

 so the color picker was also another thing that you guys shipped. can you tell me a little bit about that and sort of the problem that you were, were solving with building that.

frances: Yeah, we

Ed: Yeah, we had the ITO,

basically this, it's like

frances: way

Ed: a beta set.

frances: when you're searching for icons. and a

Ed: and a lot of people have brand colors.

frances: certain situation that they're looking for, and they kind of

Ed: Imagine their.

frances: what the icons would look like with different colors. but

Ed: But this actually

frances: see them.

So if you're. Searching around for the right icon for your situation, you can actually set the color and it'll apply to all the icons on the search view. So you can really quickly get a sense of what it's gonna look like when you're done. and so that was kinda the

Ed: kind inspiration

frances: is just making it easier for users.

We've

Ed: we've had

frances: for a while where you could per icon go in and change the color, but it made it a little. More laborious to like go through all the icons and say, okay, try it with this color. Try it with this color each time. So it's kind of cool.

Matt: So you can just do it in one fell swoop and get a, get an idea of what you're looking at.

frances: Yeah.

Ed: And we added that, same functionality to our category landing page. And if you have a kit and you have custom icons that you've uploaded or, created in the Icon Wizard, you can apply that same thing there.

Matt: Nice. 

frances: I was

Ed: I was gonna say it's really [00:06:00] nice to

frances: options that it has. 'cause it lets you set like the, the primary

Ed: color,

which

frances: to all the icons. but then

Ed: do have

frances: are

Ed: special

frances: have a second

Ed: color,

frances: they inherit from the primary, but you

Ed: Pretty awesome static

frances: this way. and

Ed: and we could change

frances: for Duotone icon.

So it

Ed: the.

frances: of flexibility, for when you wanna preview exactly what you're gonna get. and then there's a reset button for when you're like. Okay, I wanna be done. and, color swatches. So if you set a

Ed: color.

frances: then you're trying out some other ones and you wanna go back to that original color, um, we have a little set of swatches that you can easily jump around between.

So there's a lot of little functionality in there that I think will be useful for people.

Matt: Nice little color swatch pretty. It's the wall. Oh, do I like this color or do I like this color?

frances: Yeah. Yep,

Ed: this is

is actually

frances: the web awesome color picker, um, from our, our other, tool called Web.

Awesome. And this is, uh, kind of one of our first uses using it on phone. Awesome. And it's worked out really well.

Matt: That's great. Yeah. I love, the more I'm having conversations with folks on the different teams, the, the more I'm like we're helping

Ed: helping each other out.

Matt: with our own tools, you know, uh, a

frances: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: which has been pretty awesome. 

Ed: That's great. A ni. Nice little convenience. All right folks, well make sure to check that out. It'll make your workflow a little bit easier.

frances: Oh yeah.

Ed: Yeah. One to

frances: um,

Ed: mention that also is that

frances: the

Ed: the.

frances: apply to all the code snippets. So if you've got your icon kind of set up the way you want, you can use it in, conjunction with the other styling tools. it'll include that in the code snippet or the SVG or the PNG. potentially.

I think we're still working on the p and g. but it'll keep it in the code snippet, so when you copy it, you'll see the color is applied there, 

Matt: Alright. So now why don't you tell us a little bit about the user blender. This one's, this is a pretty fun one.

Ed: Yeah. So, Much like the Icon [00:08:00] Wizard. this is a way where our users can create new icons. if you open any user icon, there's this, fun little blender icon over here. And when you click on that, it is going to take, and randomly generate you a user icon. And, uh, if you don't like the one it gives you, you can, uh, blend and get a new one.

Um, or you can like, uh, just kind of scroll through, see what we have. We have, quite a few different, heads and bodies and you can mix and match all of them, and kind of come up with your own user icon. So if you want a, a bounty hunter wearing a jersey, we gotcha. Then you can just save it to a kit and then you can use it just like you do any other custom icon that's part of your kit.

Matt: That's excellent. 

frances: You could

Ed: It's quite,

frances: too, right, ed?

Ed: yes. Yep. And we have, classic, regular, solid, light, thin, and then sharp as well.

frances: I think

Ed: I think,

frances: to add more over time, like we did with the, with the other Icon Wizard.

Ed: yep.

frances: So

Ed: And there are a few options in here, that you can only get this way. for user icons, you know, we have, we have quite a few user icons, as part of font. Awesome. yeah, there's, there's a few, options for heads and bodies that you can only get through that. So, and we'll be adding more like.

Like Francis said. 

Matt: Great. I mean, you could just use a boring old user icon or. I mean, come on. 

Ed: this, this was a really fun feature to work on. Um,

Matt: yeah.

Ed: I love, things that, Are playful. So it's kind of, this feels kinda like a toy, [00:10:00] right? It's not I think it, I think, uh, we can definitely get, um, some good users icons out of it for, for people, right? So you wanna customize things. You can come up with some very creative stuff, but it also is just super fun to come in here and click the button and watch it, like, rotate through stuff and you know,

frances: Yeah, I

Ed: it's a toy.

frances: started, right? It's just a little side project, one of the snuggles and you wrote me into working on it with you and I got, I was hooked just 'cause it was fun.

Ed: yeah. Most of this work did come out of our snuggle. After, you know, the, the success of the Icon Wizard, I kept thinking, well, what else could we do? putting a modifier on an icon through the Icon Wizard is great. And I, I kept thinking like, what if we pushed it farther?

What, other things could we do with this? And then, you know, talking with Mike and, Francis, it just kind of came up and this, this just turned out to be a really great idea. So.

Matt: Super fun. speaking of the Icon Wizard, have you seen folks use that in like creative ways? Like, Hey, I, this, you know, this mashup of this icon for my like that. Do you have examples of, Folks reaching out about anything like that?

Ed: I've, I've seen some pretty unique combinations, just when doing, help tickets and looking at people's accounts that way. I've not actually seen any out in the wild on a website or anything, but

frances: It'd be fun to hear from folks about what they've done with it.

Matt: So there's the call out, you know, folks that are listening and watching. if you have a creative use of the Icon Wizard and now with this new functionality with the, uh, the blender, let us know. We'd love to, to spread the joy with that kind of stuff. 

Ed: and if you have any other ideas on interesting ways to combine icons, I'd love to hear 'em.

Matt: Yeah, for sure.

Ed: Sure, we'd love to hear.

Matt: So give us a holler at Hello at Fawn. Awesome. Uh, where a. Actual human trademarking receive your email and uh, and we get your

frances: Could be me, could be Ed.[00:12:00]

Matt: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It could be any one of us, you never know, but it will be an actual human and auto a robot. This

Ed: this was

Matt: the 7.2 launch, right? Or is that, is it kind of separate?

Ed: it came out yesterday. seven, two came out Monday or Tuesday. it kind of is part of the seven two launch, but it wasn't at exactly the same time.

Matt: sure. We're gonna, we're gonna just kind. I wanna just slide it, slide it right in there, you know, for folks that are, for folks that are just checking out these features. 7.2. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's pretty much part of, part of what we shipped.

 oh, so this is a total side side quest here. I, I've noticed in the Slack channel Ed, that there's a, you've made a, you've made a film debut,

Ed: Oh my.

Matt: a little, a side project with your son. you tell me a little bit about that?

Ed: Oh man. So my, my son who recently graduated college, him and his friends are working on a YouTube channel and they're coming up with some like crazy videos of. they've got some kind of plot where one of their friends is supposed to have a boxing match with another person, and they wrote me into, playing a side character where I put on my, uh, sky rim helm and act like a complete idiot.

Matt: Cinematic genius, man. What's the

Ed: Yep.

It's like Bower, it's BOW ZIRI believe. and you know, they're just doing crazy, crazy videos.

frances: They're pretty excellent.

Matt: maybe, maybe they'll get, uh, YouTube famous.

Ed: Yeah, I'm sure they would love that.

Matt: Yeah. the uh, sometimes, sometimes that brain rot just hits it at the exact right moment. You never know. You might be sitting on a gold mine there.

[00:14:00] Alright folks, we'll make sure to check that out. We'll add that into the show notes.

Ed: Thanks Francis.

Matt: and Ed for coming on podcast. Awesome. And sharing with us a few of the new features that we've got.

hopefully that's gonna make things easier for folks and their workflow and add a little extra delight to to their workflows. So thanks again for coming on.

Ed: Yeah. Thanks Matt.

Matt: Yeah.

frances: Thanks.

All righty folks. That's the scoop on the latest font. Awesome goodness. A one click PNG downloader, A color picker that makes previewing brand colors way less fiddly. 

 and if you try the Icon Wizard or the blender and you make something fun that you'd like to share, you can send it to us. Yes, a real human at hello@phawesome.com. And don't forget, we also have that extended video version on YouTube that includes short visual demos of all of these features, and it's perfect if you want to watch the magic happen instead of imagining it like it's, I don't know, on the radio or something like that.

Until next time, you know what to do, go make something awesome.