Icons and libraries
July 10, 2020, 3:15 pm

So I have a thing that I work on periodically. It's a library of javascript code that is... well more or less a jquery replacement. But it's something I wrote, and it's something that does what I want. And I made it to learn a lot, but also because it's small, and it's clean, and I like it. It doesn't really have a name, but it's part of my apptools collection on github, and it just got a new release.

I was working on another project, my icon library, and I started to convert it to something that uses my library, and it had ALL KINDS of problems when it came to querying on an svg element. Turns out I had to solve lots of problems, and I had to solve a number of them, and I had to set up an ampps server to get everything working right, and it was just a whole thing.

But I think I fixed a number of necessary issues with my library, and it's never felt better. Not just its use, but also my whole work process got streamlined a bit, and it felt really good.

... Maybe I'll update my website one of these days.

So I've gone a little overboard...
April 23, 2019, 12:58 am

I have a new thing I've been working on recently. I may as well post about it here.

I've been teaching now for about 10 years. I've never been better at programming and design than right now. I have not been sitting back idle, I have been attempting to push myself forward. The questions my students bring, and the projects they conceive have been amazing for my own personal growth as a professional.

Recently I began trying to write down some of the things I wish I had more time to talk about or teach during class. Either things that I came up with on my own for my own work, or things that are just beyond the scope of a design oriented school. Tutsos.com is a tutorial website, that I am becoming quite proud of. It is an organic recording of my own tools and how to make them from scratch.

One of the things I made offhandedly one night was a set of icons for a mobile design tutorial. And it ballooned out of control. I now have over 200 icons in a set that I designed. As a guy that never considered himself a designer, this is a big feat for me. If you'd like to check them out, they are searchable at icon.tutsos.com. But I'll just embed that here.

Sometimes you gotta make a thing
March 25, 2019, 3:38 pm

Sometimes, you just have to sit down and look at every app you can find, and if you ever see an icon twice, you gotta make a version of it.

I learned a lot about current trends in icon design by doing this set. It was also a lot of fun to subvert some of those trends.

prev next hamburger list shishkabob-vertical shishkabob-horizontal grid-3 grid-2-full grid-2-open home
group profile camera heart search star bell pencil microphone reload
checkmark plus close minus arrow-left arrow-right arrow-up arrow-down gear target
chat-empty chat-full messages-empty messages-full send-message circle-i smiley circle-no thumbs-up thumbs-down
feed suitcase folder mail image lock-closed lock-open camera-video cart-empty cart-full
bluetooth bluetooth-full bars-reception-1 bars-reception-2 bars-reception-3 bars-reception-4 wifi-1 wifi-2 wifi-3 cast
world map-marker map-folded location-direction location-star location-driving timeline share note-location note-empty
layers layers-alt banner-bookmark banner-bookmark-plus cloud cloud-download cloud-upload battery-empty battery-half battery-full
circle-plus circle-minus circle-close circle-checkmark square-rounded-plus square-rounded-minus square-rounded-close square-rounded-checkmark square-plus square-minus
square-close square-checkmark book-open ticket paperclip trashcan phone pin paper flag

Indeed. I may have spent too much time on this. Even when in fact I didn't spend much time at all. Some of these might get a slight update, but this was a lot of fun. I think every one of my students should have to do this as an exercise.

This is for a thing. You may already know. I'll be announcing it soon.

Tags: icons
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