What happens when you take icons built to scale cleanly at any size and deliberately make them look like they were drawn on a Game Boy? You get Pixel, Font Awesome’s retro video game–inspired Pro+ icon pack.

On this episode of Podcast Awesome, Matt sits down with Font Awesome designers Noah Jacobus and Jory Raphael to dig into how Pixel came together. They cover the Game Boy, Panic’s little yellow Playdate, a tip of the hat to original Mac icon designer Susan Kare, and the surprisingly sneaky math behind faking pixels with vectors. Bonus: Jory admits to lying about file sizes in real time.

This one gets visual, with grids, key shapes, and pixel cheats on screen, so it’s worth watching on YouTube instead of just listening.

🗒️ What We Cover
🕹️ Why the original Game Boy shaped Pixel’s look, right down to that shadowy old display
🍌 The Playdate, Panic’s tiny banana-colored handheld, as a daily dose of pixel art inspiration
🖥️ Easter eggs on the Pixel page: a Playdate settings screen and a classic Mac System 7 control panel
📱 How Font Awesome took off by scaling cleanly on high-density screens, and how Pixel runs the opposite direction
💀 “Pixel cheating”: why the skull’s eyes sit on a different grid than its outline
🔲 Landing on a 24-pixel grid after three or four rounds of test sets
✏️ Why removing a single pixel from a corner is a huge design decision
📐 Why vector “pixels” actually make bigger files than smooth curves
🎸 Creative constraints, Jack White, and four-track recorders
👾 A Space Invaders prototype built from Pixel icons, and a possible Space Awesome cameo

⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – A quick heads-up: watch this one
00:30 – Welcome to Podcast Awesome
01:00 – The Game Boy as Pixel’s muse
02:30 – The Playdate and creative constraints
03:15 – Susan Kare and the classic Mac nods
04:15 – Icon fonts vs. raster: how Font Awesome got its start
05:45 – Pixel cheating and the skull’s eyes
07:15 – The Space Awesome rocket and the 200-icon baseline
08:30 – The Font Awesome flag goes pixel
09:15 – Jory’s Space Invaders prototype
10:15 – Finding the 24-pixel grid
11:30 – Drawing pixels with vectors: paper sketches and key shapes
12:30 – Why one pixel matters so much
14:00 – Jory’s file size confession
15:45 – Jack White, four-tracks, and working with limits
18:00 – Easier and harder at the same time
19:45 – Spotting Pixel in the wild
21:00 – Making things just because they’re fun
22:15 – Wrap-up and credits

🔗 Links & Resources
Hosted, produced and edited by Matt Johnson
Featuring Jory & Noah
Theme song by Ronnie Martin
Music interstitials by Zach Malm
Video editing by Isaac Chase

Browse the Pixel icon pack (Pro+): [https://fontawesome.com/icons/packs/pixel]
Explore the full icon library: [https://fontawesome.com/icons]
Play Space Awesome: [https://spaceawesome.io/]
More episodes of Podcast Awesome: [https://www.podcastawesome.com/]

Using Pixel or another Pro+ pack in a project? Send it our way. We’d love to see what you’re making.

#FontAwesome #PixelArt #IconDesign #GameBoy #Playdate #RetroGaming #PodcastAwesome