How I grew my audience

I’ve always felt that icons can elevate the look and feel of a design just as good as typography can. There’s a reason Inter became so widely used and popular, preferred by so many designers. In addition to its great legibility, Inter typeface's popularity also comes from its ability to elevate designs.

From the start, I wanted Popicons to do that too—to make products look and feel better. Now that its release is only a few days away, I'm excited to see what people will actually create with Popicons.

I started designing icons in Illustrator, and over time switched over to Figma because of its speed, simplicity, flexibility, and just following the format that others prefer. Offering variants, quick search, easy export, and other features within the tool, was just something it was hard for me to ignore. Even the big Font Awesome team moved over from Illustrator to Figma.

Almost two years ago, when I first started experimenting with icons, I wasn't all that happy with how they looked. I kept experimenting and trying different things until I felt that I’ve hit the sweet spot.

When that happened, and I signed off on the grid, sizing, stroke, radiuses and all the finer details, that's when the real fun began.

And, thanks to social media, I've been sharing my progress from day one, which has sparked a lot of interest. I heard from companies, developers, designers and others who wanted to help or work together.

If you make things, I think you should show them. And not just the finished product, but how you made it as well. The worst you can do as a creator is to hide your creations. By hiding, you might miss out on good feedback, meeting new people, and getting more people to see your work. If nobody knows what you’re making, how can they find you?

People on social media like seeing others make stuff, not just repeat the same old advice. Showing your work also keeps you going. If I kept building in the dark, I'm not sure I'd ever finish.

I tried to make my tweets fun and interactive by showing both, polished work, and work in progress.

Here’s one such example:

One of such tweets hit a whooping 2.4M impressions. I spent a long time on one icon, and when I was done, I noticed a whole hour went by. So I decided to share how long it took, and people went nuts.

From this single tweet, I gained 1k followers in a matter of hours, and a hundred people signed up for Popicons. Would that ever happen if I didn't share my creations? Highly unlikely. As creators, we should use the tools available to us, so we can connect with an audience we didn't even know existed.

I also shared other stuff, like behind the scenes.

I let my audience choose a name for my icon set.

All of the above, combined with consistent work, resulted in a following that I wouldn’t have if there wasn’t for social media.

Some creators stay away from social media, but I think it entirely depends on who you surround yourself over there. I've met so many amazing people online.

This tweet sums it up well.

If you’re a creator, I hope this motivates you a bit to open yourself to criticism, and start sharing. In reality, people are nicer then what we tend to think.

As for those who are negative, very few pay attention to them anyway, so why even bother?

P.S. If you’re interested in Popicons, there’s just a few days left to pre-order at a lower price, so now’s the best time to get it.

— Filip