Swag Sharing + Mug Mishaps
about 7 years ago – Tue, Apr 04, 2017 at 11:31:10 PM

Happy Tuesday, Backers!

It looks like many of you have received your shirts, stickers, magnets, and mugs. For those of you still waiting, we're prepping and getting the last shipments now, so hang tight! Thanks to everyone who's tweeted or shared their swag - the team loves seeing how you're using your stickers, rocking your shirts, and what you're filling your mugs with. :)

Speaking of mugs, we've also noticed that some of the enamel mugs have arrived in less than perfect condition. We expected the rims and handles of the mugs to have some variance, as those are intentionally hand painted to give them a dash of uniqueness. But, it looks like some mugs are suffering from the following:

• paint chipping
• misalignment of graphics
• bare metal 
• visible hard sharp edges (coffee shouldn't bite back, well, that much)

That's "no bueno" and not acceptable to us. We want you to be as proud of your mug as we are of all of your support. So, if you have a mug with one or more of the conditions above, here's what to do:

1. Take photos of the mug that show the issue and even the box itself (in case there are shipping issues we need to fix)

2. Email us the photos at [email protected] and make sure to include your name and email address you provided to Kickstarter/Backerkit. 

3. Hang tight while we talk to our supplier and shippers to get things rectified - we'll be getting back to you directly about next steps.

Thanks for your patience and continued support through the project. We're hoping to make everything awesome, with your help.

Swag Extras and BackerKit Address Update Cutoff
about 7 years ago – Thu, Mar 09, 2017 at 11:03:08 PM

Swag Extras are Awesome!

Hello lovely Font Awesome backers! We just got our swag upgrade stickers and magnets in-house, so we wrote up a whole article on how awesome they are and how awesome Sticker Mule is to work with. We've got some great photos of the finished products, so don't miss it!

Update your BackerKit Address

T-shirts are going to the screen printers as we speak and are going to start shipping out next Tuesday or Wednesday if everything goes to plan. Mugs should arrive late next week and should also be shipping out shortly. So make sure to update your address in BackerKit if you've recently changed addresses, because after Tuesday, we'll be locking these down completely!

Next Up

I just spent several week agonizing over the look and feel of the different icon weights (solid, regular outline, and thin outline). Early next week, look forward to the next update in the repo of the newest icons. They'll include quite a few new icons, stylistic updates, and the first look at the regular outline icons.

Also, we're starting to get photos of the enamelware mugs. These things are absolutely gorgeous. We'll go into full detail next week!

And make sure you read the article on Font Awesome 5 Kickstarter swag extras!

Icons, T-shirts, Moderators, & FA.com
about 7 years ago – Thu, Feb 09, 2017 at 10:59:42 PM

Icons & Expectations

Please keep in mind that this is the slowest part of designing the icon set. We're currently designing icons slower than we'll need to to make the May deadline, but this is intentional. Now is our chance to make sure we get the design system right for the entire set.

I've been hard at work defining the overall style for Font Awesome 5. This is by far the most time-consuming part designing icons. The process and can take several hours per icon -- designing individually, considering them as a group, tweaking, and all over again. 

We're painstakingly considering every single point, curve, and angle carefully to make sure things fit together perfectly. And making sure they render pixel-perfect at the native 16px size. I'm extremely proud of how these are coming together. 

Here's a preview of the latest icons I just checked in:

 Important T-Shirt Update

Well, lookie there. Since we started our Kickstarter campaign, American Apparel has gone bankrupt-bankrupt (they've been bankrupt before but it never completely under). So this means our 2001 and 2102 shirt models cannot be found. We're extremely disappointed with this, but are sadly going to have to make some changes.

We've looked at comparable shirt blanks and have settled on the Bella Canvas 3001. These should be a similar quality of shirt and retain similar sizing to what folks were expecting with the American Apparel shirts.

Again, we're really sorry about this change, but there's not much we can do. To attempt to compensate, we're doubling the number of stickers that will be included with shirt orders. Instead of 2 4"x6" sticker sheets, T-shirt backers will be receiving a full 8.5"x11" sticker sheet. We hope this helps.

Community Moderators

The Font Awesome Pro GitHub repo has been exploding with activity. Honestly, we're completely blown away with how many folks are in there making issues, fixing spelling errors, and making icon category suggestions!

If we're going to hit our May 2017 deadline, we're sadly not going to have as much time as we'd like to spend right now in the repo with you all. We could easily spend all day there every day!

So we're going to start looking for folks to become community moderators. How do you apply, you ask? It's simple. Just help other folks out in the repo and in the Kickstarter updates. We'll be looking for folks to take up the mantle in a more official manner. Stay tuned for more advice and specific ways to get involved. :)

FontAwesome.com

We've been making some major changes under the covers at FontAwesome.com. We initially started by using our shared auth service that our other sites use (cdn.fontawesome.com and fortawesome.com). It's been running for months unattended but had a serious hiccup. This caused a few folks' accounts to go into confirmation limbo when the auth service went down, but this has been fixed. Everyone affected should have been notified. We decided to make this top priority, as it will simplify of our later work and make for a better experience overall. Also, shared authentication is really hard, no matter how experienced you are. :)

Now that we've fixed the issues with FA.com, we'll be finishing invoices for a few remaining Kickstarter backers and folks who ordered add-ons and pre-orders with BackerKit. We're really sorry for the delay, but we'll get those fixed up as early as we can next week. Seriously, thanks for your patience.

You all are awesome. Have we mentioned that today?

Font Awesome Accounts — Try #2
about 7 years ago – Wed, Feb 01, 2017 at 09:46:30 PM

We screwed this up once.
Things should be fixed now, we think.
Give it a shot, please!

Okay, folks. We’re pretty certain we’ve fixed the root causes from FA Accounts Try #1. We’re sending out batches of 1,000 and will keep an eye on things.

The problems were a combination of two things we found (Nerd Alert!):

• A third party connection library (Hackney) that was configured to 50 external connections by default. This is primarily what caused the issue with GitHub auth, and we’ve upped the pool accordingly.
• We had a data loss issue (!!!) from a mis-configuration of Elixir. This only hit our Backer table, so was easy enough to restore.

We think this should take care of things, so we’re sending out invites again. Remember that this first round is just for Kickstarter Backers. PayPal and BackerKit pre-orders should go out next week.

(For more context, please see our most recent Update #19.)

FA Account Invites & Update
about 7 years ago – Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 10:53:30 PM

Well, that was embarrassing.

We've just totally bungled the initial launch of your Font Awesome accounts. We had 2 separate issues hit us in production that never showed up on staging. One was a silent failure on backer data import (solved) and the other is an issue with GitHub account linking (not solved).

We're working hard to get this fixed up. We're really sorry, and we'll post an update and re-send invitations as soon we get things sorted.

Font Awesome Account Invitations

This is currently only for Kickstarter backers who selected a reward that includes a Font Awesome Pro license of some kind. For pre-orders and backers who selected no reward or just a mug, we'll send out account invitations in the next few days (hopefully sooner rather than later).

As a reminder, your FA account will immediately allow you to: 1) Customize and print your invoice and 2) Connect to the FA Pro GitHub Repo and get involved!

FA Pro Repo

First, temper your expectations. Font Awesome Pro is not ready to use in production. :) But after you connect your GitHub account, you'll immediately have access to a few things:

• Extremely early versions of a few Font Awesome 5 icons. Just a few SVGs for now.
• GH Issues where you can vote on icon pack categories that have already been suggested and suggest your own new categories.

Please read all contributing guidelines and readmes!

Swag

Making mugs, shirts, stickers, magnets, and polybags is quite an intensive process. We've selected a t-shirt printer and fulfillment partner, and we have sent the 50% deposit to our mug supplier. 

For stickers, magnets, and polybags, we're working with Sticker Mule. Due to different packaging sizes for t-shirts (polybag) and mugs (cardboard box), we're going to offer different sticker and magnet extras for each. T-shirts will include a Font Awesome Pro icons sticker sheet and a FA color logo magnet, while mugs will include a FA logo magnet and 2 vinyl FA logo transfer stickers (one black, one white). We got back early samples of transfer stickers and magnets, and they're awesome. We don't want to spoil what they look like just yet, so stay tuned for an update dedicated to the awesome stuff that's coming from Sticker Mule.

Icon Design

For the first time since the Kickstarter ended, I finally had time to get back into FA5 icon design. Before the Kickstarter, we designed a couple dozen icons to get a feel for the overall design and show off in the campaign (you can find most of these in the repo). Now we're starting down the road of creating the full icon style guide that will help our icons all appear like part of the same set. Things like standardized line thickness, corner border radius, and lots more.

Expect the first article on our icon design process in the next week or so. We've got a lot of work ahead of us!