Nerd Show and Tell: Meet Noah Jacobus, Senior Icon Designer

🎧 Exploring Sharp Icons, Retro Gaming & Design Rhythms with Noah JacobusIn the inaugural episode of Nerd Show and Tell, Matt Johnson chats with Font Awesome icon designer Noah Jacobus about the creative crossover between music, icon design, and visual rhythm.Noah shares how his background in music education unexpectedly shaped his approach to visual design, leading to his work designing the Font Awesome Sharp icon family — a bold reimagining of one of the web’s most iconic tools.They dive into:The design philosophy behind the Sharp icon aestheticHow musical hierarchy and rhythm translate to scalable iconographyThe behind-the-scenes grind of crafting over 20,000 iconsNoah’s obsession with retro handheld games (looking at you, Playdate 👾)Why design and game nostalgia often go hand-in-handWhether you're into SVG design, retro game consoles, or just love seeing how seemingly unrelated disciplines collide — this one’s for you.⏱️ Episode Timestamps00:08 – Designing the Font Awesome Sharp family02:59 – Music meets visual arts04:30 – Rhythm, hierarchy & design language10:07 – Joining the Font Awesome team12:32 – Sharp icon design challenges16:56 – Handheld retro gaming love19:47 – Pixel art, nostalgia, and iconography🔗 Links & Credits🎯 Add a Touch of Class with Font Awesome Sharp Icons 🎙️ Meet Noah Jacobus, Icon Designer Extraordinaire 🕹️ Playdate – retro-style handheld game 🎵 Theme by Ronnie Martin 🎶 Music segues by Zach Malm 🎸 Outro track “Man is He Mega - GLBML” by Geoffrey Burch 🎛️ Audio mastering by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions-------------------Highlights"It can only do some specific things very well. And so there's some very creative solutions for how to make interesting games for that. That's the same kind of thing that interests me a lot about iconography in that way is that emphasis on working within constraints. And I think that's kind of what drew me to retro gaming and kind of the resurrection of it as well and kind of the preservation of it, too, is like a kind of focus on that, working with what they had and really making cool stuff.""... The Playdate by Panic has been really cool to see in development and I was finally able to get one earlier this year. And kind of the emphasis that goes into especially when you're creating a new handheld like this. It's kind of inspired by the Game Boy and a lot of old things and kind of choosing which design constraints you want to embrace to kind of set it apart because the playdate is kind of a weird form factor and it has a black and white screen that doesn't have a backlight and it's got some very unique inputs on it. It has some of the stuff you might expect with buttons and stuff, but it also has an accelerometer in it and it has a crank on the side of it and other things like that that are really interesting of like these are some new innovative things. But there's still cool ways to foster creativity because it's not a little wonder handheld that can do everything."Stay up to date on all the Font Awesomeness!