Michael Flarup, The iOS App Icon Book and Northplay CEO

Michael wrote a book on App Icons. The Kickstarter on this book ends on December 10. So get in there if there’s still time. He also runs a company called North Play.

A graphic designer with many interests, who happened to create an awesome book on iOS app icons. The first thing an end user will likely see of your product as an app developer. 

• The iOS App Icon Book
• Michael on Twitter: @flarup
• His game studio: Northplay

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:10

Where's my notes documents? Obviously, if I'm typing, you're gonna hear my keyboard. You lost my floor up. Do I say that correctly? Flat hope, flat

Michael Flarup: 0:19

hope. I didn't find it like the Americans are like flareup. And that's fine. Like you can go with flare up?

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:27

Yeah, well, I'll just see what else.

Michael Flarup: 0:29

I'll never try to force anyone to say the dangers when, similarly, I appreciate not having to pronounce in Dutch words at all.

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:39

It depends on how you behave. Hi, and welcome to another special edition of a podcast. I'm sitting here with Michael flower. And he's from Denmark. He runs a small game studio, I'm told. And he also does a nice Kickstarter right now about a book about iOS app icons. And I just wanted to have an interview with him to just see how it is to run a Kickstarter to actually be a company owner, and doing all these things at the same time while working in the iOS ecosystem. So Michael, welcome. How are you doing today?

Michael Flarup: 1:15

My day was pretty stressful. I feel like I promised myself I wouldn't stress in December, I make that promise myself every December. And what happens is that, you know, you just, you know, put way too much into the month. It's one of the shortest work months of the year, but somehow most of us think that we can, at least myself, I think I can cram like three months of work in there. A lot of deadlines in December, I think there's a natural into the year, right. And so we we plan to finish things before the end of the year, which is really silly. So yeah, I've had a busy day, just doing juggling lots of different tasks. Of course, the the Kickstarter that we'll be talking about is a is taking up a lot. A lot of time right now. It's the last three days of this right now. As we're recording this, there's three days left on the Kickstarter. So yeah,

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:04

that's that's really the the the crunch time of the Kickstarter, really just getting the updates out, making sure that you do you're already past the the goal, I think,

Michael Flarup: 2:14

yeah, it's not that I'm stressing over the fact that we have to raise more funds. We've already I mean, the Kickstarter has been, it's completely blown me away the amount of support that we've gotten, maybe for the people listening to this, and we're like, Okay, what's the Kickstarter, I'm working on a kick, a book about iOS app icons. And that's the kickstart we're referencing. And so I don't know, there's just a lot of other work behind the scenes in and I want to finish off the Kickstarter in a nice way. Of course, as you said, yourself, getting the updates out, there's a lot of you're communicating a lot with a lot of people want to make sure that, you know, it feels like it's a nice, good end to the actual campaigning. So we are planning a little rap party on Friday, just trying to you know, you try to get the last bits of attention out of the campaign to make sure that it ends in a in a nice way. Yeah, you

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:07

want to like come to a conclusion for everybody who's been along with the journey, funding maybe from the start, and also people who got in late. But before we dive into that, you mentioned that you had quite a busy month, or actually have quite a busy month, and that you try and cram all kinds of things in there. Can you give like a bit of an overview of the things that you're working on? Because obviously the Kickstarter, then there's a company, but is there more?

Michael Flarup: 3:36

Yeah, no, I have a kind of a weird career was like a huge, it's like a quilt of many different things. So my day job is that I run a small game studio called North play in Copenhagen, I have nine employees and we've been going at it for five years. And that's been sort of a dream since I was a kid like running a game studio and making well making video games not necessarily running a game studio, but here we are. So there's a lot of tasks involved in that. You know, we're you know, pitching new things for clients, because we also do some client work, we're finishing up updates to existing games, and we have a new game coming out on the switch in January, which means that we have to prepare a lot the material before Christmas. So a lot of stuff in surrounding that. So I'm involved in most of those things, not just as the CEO but as a visual designer, as well. And I do a lot of the video work also. So there's like a lot of tasks related to that to being the you know, to doing all the management stuff around ending the year. That's pretty boring stuff. But you know, a lot of work involved in that sort of stuff. I've got I still freelance sometimes from from time to time. I do a lot of work on app icons, funding, also like interface design, product design, logo design. And yeah, and then there's the Kickstarter Of course, which is still been going for almost a month now. Been full on hectic And it's just a lot of like, just a lot of balls in the air a lot of things that have to like juggle before go on vacation. So it's kind of hard to give like a very specific breakdown, but there's a lot of different tasks there.

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:24

Okay, well, let's just dive into a few of those things. Because let's start with North play, because it's Game Studio, you have several products already out there with, with nor play. Yeah, I reckon, because you've been doing it for five years, it is, to some extent, self sustaining successful, at least you can keep going, it seems. So how is that running and games to do? Is it like, is the financial side of things always an issue? Or is it something that you that you have covered sort of, if just keep on putting out decent content,

Michael Flarup: 6:00

the financial situation is always an issue, I think, I don't think that's very different from most other types of companies, but particularly the gaming industry, it is a very fickle industry, it's very good games are very complex investments that take a long time to bring to market. And they cost a lot of, you know, energy and money to produce from some very talented people, it's very specialized field. And so so it's, it's tough, and it's a, it's a constantly evolving space. And if you're trying to do it all by yourself, so that's, you know, coming up with the games, your own IP, you're trying to self publish things, and you're trying to self fund things. And, and, you know, you're releasing things yourself, you're doing your own PR, you're doing your own support, doing everything yourself, that's what we're doing at North play, we do basically doing game development on heart. And I've been bootstrapping that company for five years. And, and I can only really, we can all really do that, because I've have maybe, you know, 15 years of freelancing behind me, and I get to work with some very talented people. So, so it, but it's always a balancing act, and there's really no, there's no guarantee that we will be around in a year or two years. Because once you start having a certain size, your burn rate is so high, that you constantly have to feed it. And so you need to try to you try to make strategic decisions about what to do next. But most products that you yourself develop will take 234 years before they come out, right. So you constantly have like this time lag. So trying to make up by of course, like we do, we try to, you know, do client work. And I know a lot of other small studios do that. But there is a an inbuilt sort of danger of doing client work is that you sort of become what you work on. So if you if you make a poor choice and work on something that's uninteresting, or that pushes the team towards a certain type of technology, or you know, type of product, you become an expert at that, and you'll continue getting work like that. So it's very easy to get derailed. And it's very hard to combine, like the fact that you want to stay independent and build your own things. But you also want to work for clients and make sure that you have enough money to pay for salaries, but you don't want to work on boring things. And so those those two things are in constant flux and, and I usually explain it the way it is like, this is the hardest game that I've ever played, like being the the CEO of a small game studio, because it is really tricky to make ends meet and to and to, to produce things. And making games is really fun. But it's also really hard, right? A lot of people they play a lot of games, and they're like, I can make games. And I was like that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 8:49

So you're basically playing a real life version of Games Game Studio tycoon? Yes,

Michael Flarup: 8:54

exactly. Yeah, that's, that's sometimes it feels like like that. But yeah, no, it's it's it's a multifaceted discipline. And I love it. It's absolutely amazing. It wouldn't change it for anything. But it is it is very tricky.

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:08

So and then the time split between working on your own products with the team and having yourself and your team members are working for third parties. Is that like a clear cut line that you draw? Or is it a bit dependent on on what kinds of projects from clients come your way?

Michael Flarup: 9:28

Yeah, it's that's a good question. It's, it is very fluid. I think I I've sort of constructed and an everyday for myself that that is quite loose and very flexible. I have like yourself, I have two small kids. And so I and we work from home I've been working from home for a long time and coming into the office occasionally but really trying to schedule my own my own work life balance in a way that's beneficial to my family and to myself into the My interests. And I want to be in a position where I am, you know, constantly inspired and I have the flexibility to to To grab on to an idea that might come my way. And I think that's, that's been a fun sort of way to build my career because it's it, you're constantly trying to be like, opportunistic about, like, Oh, this is an interesting thing that I would like to do. And if I set my schedule in stone, or try to make some clear boundaries, it might be much harder for me to, to, to pursue some of these ideas, right, the the app icon book, Kickstarter, the whole idea of producing a physical book is one of those side projects that had I, you know, been working in a more like stringent way where I had to like, you know, clock clock in and out from nine to five or whatever, and go to an office every day, I would never have been able to make a project like that, because it really has taken a lot of time.

Jeroen Leenarts: 10:57

So and just to look at this Kickstarter book, we'll dive into it a bit more later. But how do you decide that it's a good idea to create a Kickstarter, while you're already running a company and doing client work? And so how does that work? Because, obviously, you have an idea, you have thoughts, you start maybe sketching it out a little bit. So to make it a bit more of a concept. Yeah. But then at some point, you have to make this decision, either it's a good idea to execute on this, or it's a bad idea. And then you make a choice.

Michael Flarup: 11:32

Yeah, that's a that's a good question. So first of all, I want to I want to preface the answer with, I have like a graveyard of products that never, you know, went anywhere. And actually, many of them, we, I finished them with people. So we did do the websites, the apps, the everything, right, but there was just never really a business there in the first place. But I, I don't regret really any of them, because they were just me chasing what I thought would be fun at the time. And sometimes that goes hand in hand with a good solid business plan. Sometimes Most often it does not, it's just sort of like just kind of tickling my own fancy of what what I would think would be interesting to make. And the app icon book is was like just another one of those things in the long string of the many side projects, people who follow my work will know this, there's just a, I've just, I just like to dabble in a lot of different things. The app icon book, I kind of it's an idea I've had for a very, very long time. And, and so because because my background is as a visual designer, and app icons make designing app icons have been a staple part of my career for the longest time ever. In many ways. It's kind of like how I got my start as a designer, because just to sort of turn down, turn back the clock a little bit. I think back around like 2000, like five or something like that, when we're sort of starting to to do more and more design, I was like hanging out in forums online, just doing places like Mac themes. And like these really obscure phpBB boards for designers, and we just, we'd make Winamp, skins and wallpapers and icon sets and things like that. And there was not any great demand for any of these things. It was just sort of, you know, we just did it as a hobby, because we wanted to customize the computers that we were playing around with. And maybe we did some web design or some freelance for people on the side. But whenever I got the chance, I would I would make icons, and and then the smartphone came around, right, we got the iPhone. And suddenly this kind of obscure skill of conceptualizing and rendering iconography. I know that icons have been around on the Mac for a long time. But suddenly, with the smartphone, it was really thrust onto the mainstage on home screens. It was very it was it was popularized. And a lot of it was in high demand suddenly. So those few people that were on those forums, I know most of them by name. Some of them are friends of mine still. And they were suddenly like, they went on to be hugely influential people that shapes visual design today that either they've worked for big companies or, you know, have produced their own companies. So it was kind of like that's been my background. So app, I can somehow even with all my adventures of running companies and doing all stuff, even now running a game studio, I still love making app icons. And I sometimes do that as a freelancer. And so I've been thinking about like wanting to celebrate that for the longest time. I also make resources for people, I run a resource website called Apply pixels comm which also started from a side project of I did something called the app icon template back in the day because when you deliver app icons, you have to you know, deliver a lot of different sizes, and I did a template for that and put it up one evening. And I actually got a job interview with Apple because of that they wanted me as a as a QA, part of QA between engineers and designers, and I had had to be like, Oh no, no, you're misunderstanding me. I'm not like super pedantic about this stuff. I made this template because I'm lazy. I don't want to do it all the time. So I had to turn that down that job. But But yeah, so but but so what I'm trying to say is that app icons and making resources and talks and workshops about app I can sort of just always been there in my career. And I thought it was a shame that no one had ever done a physical book about it. I have like logo books behind me here, big, beautiful coffee table books with logos. And I was like, why hasn't anyone done this for the craft that I love, right? And so I kind of knew I wanted to make the book. And so I made a website and kind of just announced it, because there's nothing like public commitment, right? Like I'm making this book, and I was for four years ago.

Jeroen Leenarts: 15:55

So but what made you decide to create a Kickstarter on its end, because you've mentioned that you're working on it for four years, because probably, by the time that you hit launch on your Kickstarter campaign, you probably had a pretty good grasp of what the end product would would look like, what it would be what content would be at least like 80% of the content. But why then at that stage, create a Kickstarter.

Michael Flarup: 16:20

So I have been wanting to make the Kickstarter for a long time as well. And I think we could have made the Kickstarter way sooner. Because, you know, we had most of the content as you as you said, but I, I think, like, the reason why I wanted to crowdfund This is that I think there is sort of a, there is a network effect. I've done crowdfunding in the past. So it's not completely foreign to me, there is that network effect that I wanted to I, I'm very fortunate to have quite a lot of people that follow my work. But I knew that I would have to just sell, you know, such an expensive, physical product that needs to be shipped around the world, I needed to reach outside of my network, and somehow, you know, get to that next stage. And I think a crowdfunding campaign is an excellent vehicle for that. Because you know, you get that community of network effect. It is. And I designed the crowdfunding campaign for the iOS app, I can book in a very specific way, that would ensure that we would luckily reach the goal quite quickly. So have we only reached the goal, the goal was 10,000 euros, I would definitely have lost money on this book. But I was perfectly willing to do that, because I really wanted the book to exist, right? Luckily, it didn't happen that way. We were at this point where like, I think 1,300% over funded. So it's it. That's kind of ridiculous even saying it. But But But But But yeah, I know, I wanted I want to do the Kickstarter, and we could have done it a couple years back. But it was important for me that we would do it at the end, when we were almost done. Cuz I know the the stresses and the pressure of running a Kickstarter campaign. You're constantly like, you're raising funds, and you're not delivering, like, if you if I would have to work on the book for two years, while people were had actually paid me money to get it, that would have stressed me out beyond belief. It's still gonna stress me out now. Because we hopefully will have the book in hand by by like, you know, spring, but, but it's it's less of a gap. And so that's why we made a Kickstarter. And that's why we made it now.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:29

So but what about the getting 1,000% pasture funding goal? Because at some point, you must have thought when you were looking at the number of probably each day, multiple times that you were thinking like, I think I need to do some scaling up of my production here. So how was that actually? Because I can imagine that you think, okay, 200% Extra, that's nice. But then, at some point, you'd have to think, Okay, I'll need like a warehouse to be able to execute on this.

Michael Flarup: 18:59

Yeah. Yeah, no, first of all, I think this is important to mention to anyone listening that it's my name on the cover of the book, of course, but I've gotten a lot of help me in making this book. And so there's some been some very, you know, talented and patient people around me for these past four years that has helped me through this. And, and they're right there next next to me doing all this sort of stuff. Right. I think that's important to mention. One when we talk about the

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:27

how big is the team that is working on the book, that's so so

Michael Flarup: 19:31

one of the first people I contacted the team is like, we're like five or six people, but they're one of the first people I contacted was Jim Nielsen. He runs something called the iOS icon galleries. And then a couple of other actually, I can galleries. He's a very, he's very talented guy. He's very, he's a he's actually a developer, developer first designer second, but his own words, not mine. And I just knew that he would be passionate he's he curates these galleries. And so I, when I had the idea, I remember I was like, at swim practice was with my then four year old son, and I was like, I'll just text I'll just send an email to Jim like, just I know it's a far off shot like Hey, do you want to help me make a book? Right? And I think like within 10 minutes, he replied back I was like, yes. So he was on board really early. And he's really helped me with all the detective work of sort of doing the internet archaeology. We've been through. Anders buffman, was a print designer that I actually ended up hiring, working with. He works with me now and my company called play. And he works on the book, hired in all of Lindbergh, who is a very talented freelance editor that I've worked with in the past. And then of course, I have my friend Mark Edwards, who's a very talented designer as well, he runs a company called Bianco. He's just has a wealth of knowledge about graphic design. And he's sort of been a good sounding board as well. So those people been around me and many others. But those people have been taught the core core team around me. Sorry, I got away from your earlier question. What was the first question? Oh, remember?

Jeroen Leenarts: 21:06

Yeah, let me think a little bit because, yeah, I was curious about you had like a funding goal. 10 1000s. And then that's right. At some point, you're gonna go like, Oh, boy, I'm gonna need to scale up things. This is getting way out of hand. Maybe even. Yeah, so yeah. What was the experience there? Because at some point, you think I'll get successful? I'm in trouble now. Because it's too successful. Maybe? Yeah,

Michael Flarup: 21:30

yeah, no, that's definitely that's part of it. And I think we, this, as I said, this isn't my first rodeo when it comes to crowdfunding. So I think I've been very careful. And I have tried to really mitigate the effects of it be if it if it even when it happened to be successful. And there's multiple things that I've done to sort of make sure that that's not going to hurt us too much. And first of all, we did our we did our homework on, you know, costs and logistics. And it's a pretty crazy time to be shipping anything around the world. So our shipping prices are very high. Actually, we were quoted higher than what we're charging on the Kickstarter. But we're then using some of the margins to bring down from the book to bring down shipping costs.

Jeroen Leenarts: 22:16

Because because of the sheer number of people interested you, you get some scaling benefits as well, because you can do a bigger production run maybe. Exactly,

Michael Flarup: 22:25

yes. And and the, the printers that we have very carefully selected for this job is they're very, very experienced printers here in Denmark, with a long history of making high quality art books. And and you have to do you try to anticipate some of these things when you when you go and make a Kickstarter like this, right. So and the thing is, it's interesting, because you will work with a lot of partners that don't really understand the nature of Kickstarter. So the printers for examples, like how many books are you gonna make? Right? It's like, I don't know, you're gonna have to give me a quote for 100 books for 500 bucks for 1000 books. And then I will have to run those numbers with our logistical partners. And they'll be asking, how many books are you gonna ship and we're like, we don't know how many books you're going to ship to America, we don't know. So, so. So you try to we have like a spreadsheet, and you try to calculate, there's a lot of numbers in there. And I'm not a numbers guy in general, you know, people frowning at that, because I'm the CEO of the game of game studio. But I was never very talented at math. But I really tried. And there's a lot of things that goes into that equation, because you also have 5% goes to Kickstarter, you have at least 10% of the orders that will default for credit cards, logistical stuff will change, we know for sure if it I don't think that the shipping situation is just magically going to clear up in 2022. So there's like a lot of factors to take into account. And even after crunching all those numbers, you still just have like this, you the hits kind of like a roguelike game, you really don't know what's gonna happen, right? A lot of things could go wrong with the production or, you know, packages will get lost once you ship them worldwide. And so try to take some of those things into account the ones that we could, and build in some margins. It's very easy to bankrupt yourself when you're doing when you're shipping stuff worldwide. And so I was really careful about that. I hope that's not going to be the case here. And I realized that people are going to look at that, like a big number that we're gonna get from the Kickstarter, like, oh, it's payday, right? As like math. I've actually had like four years of working on this, I have expenses to pay. I've paid people to do 3d For the, for the campaign. Like there's just so many things in there, right. Hopefully, in the long run, it will be a product that can be profitable. But But this but scaling wise, there's just a lot of things to take into consideration. Another thing is that we actually thought that we would ship these from our apartments and and had it only been 500 books. We could have done that easily. Well, not maybe not easily, but we could have done that. And now that we're looking at a first production run of probably around but somewhere between two and 3000 books. I don't think we'll do that from an apartment. somewhere or house even Yeah, we will need a dedicated place to do that, I still think that we will, I think it's a little too, like it's not enough to bring in a fulfillment partner, because that's a whole different thing, right. But it will probably pack them ourselves from maybe a small warehouse, something like that. Something that will probably be cozy and fun. So And

Jeroen Leenarts: 25:31

what about people that are interested in the book after the Kickstarter has ended? Is it like a limited run? And that's it, or what are your plans after that?

Michael Flarup: 25:41

So of course, I want people to back the Kickstarter, it's way easier and way better if people just pull in the money with a Kickstarter, because those are also going to be the orders that we're going to fulfill up for up front first, but yeah, but that being said, like there, of course, we're going to this is, what will likely happen is that this is going to be like the ambassadors of the products, these are gonna be the first 1500 or 2000, people that will be getting the book. And once they start shipping in April, you're gonna you're gonna have a lot of people asking if they can buy the book, which is a good thing, a good thing, right. And so, we I do plan on I think what we'll do now is I have I've paid for like a backer kit integration. And part of that is also to do like late pledges, they have like a plugin that I can put on the website. So I actually think that when the campaign ends on Friday, I'll probably on app, I can book calm, if people, people probably listening to this after the components, they will be able to go to app, I can book calm, and hopefully they will be able to place an order. And we will, we will sort of just put them at the back of the queue in terms of like the first production run. And right now I think we've sold maybe 1500 books through the Kickstarter will end somewhere around that, right. And I'm going to be placing a somewhat bigger order, not a lot, because we don't want to be keeping, you know, permanent warehouse somewhere with like 500 books stocked, because that's, that could easily be very costly. But we are going to order maybe 2000, or two and a half 1000 books to be produced. And, and we will be selling those as we have stuck. And that's going to be the first production run. And then from there on off, it's kind of hard for me to say, right now, there's a lot of brick and mortar publishers, but big publishing houses that are contacting us, which is fun, because had I pitched this book like four years ago to a big publisher, then, you know, could be like, I'm gonna make this book about app icons, and you know, the things that live on your phone, I'm not sure that they would have no love that idea. But but now that we've shown that there is an interest in and the Kickstarter is very, very early, it's a very early way to, to sort of show people that there's interest in this product. And we've done that now. So now some doors are opening that that probably wouldn't have opened otherwise. And and I'm going to have to go down some of those doors and see like, Okay, can we make you know, deals with people to put this in actual bookstores around the world, that would be pretty cool.

Jeroen Leenarts: 28:14

One thing that I thought of is that we've been talking about a book quite extensively. But for people who are not familiar with the Kickstarter campaign that you're running, and the actual book that you are creating with a group of people, can you take like one minute to explain what the book is about and what the goal book is, and why people should buy this book.

Michael Flarup: 28:35

I've been thinking about that as well. So for anyone who wants to know more, you can go to app icon book.com You can read read up on it on your own leisure, but the idea is that it's a celebration of the art and craft of app icon design. And and what that means is that we've we've had kind of a really condensed history of art on this platform, since we we got smartphones, touch enabled devices in general, which really propelled sort of iconography from you know, something that were on computers and in Docs and tap bars into something that was under people's fingers and in a lot more hands. And so it's really utilitarian art and it's such an interesting history there's a lot of you know, great people that have sort of risen to meet this demand and a great artists and and they've created like, what what I consider a veritable treasure trove of icon it's been a golden age of icon design. That's what I'm trying to say. And, and I that I started out with like this very like, like, like just personal goal of wanting to celebrate that because it's as I said earlier, it's a it's a craft that I've spent a lot of time you know, making icons, I've just made a lot of icons, and I wanted I know other people that that feel the same way I was like yeah, we need to like put put like puts show a shine a spotlight on this sometimes overlooked part of design that I think is so so important for for products these days. And and and that's how I how it started how the book started, but Working on it for four years, another thing became very clear is that actually, we're also preserving some of this art because a lot of it is being lost to time. Because as we know, apps disappear, or they update, or you know, get sunset or sold or whatever. So a lot of the stuff that we're, it's interesting that we can be nostalgic for something that happened just 10 years ago. But here we are. And and I think that's the vibe that a lot of people get from this book, right. So it's really celebrates, like the whole history of app icons, from back from the skeuomorphic days to telling the story of how like the great flattening of iOS seven happened, and how some of the vibrancy and tactility is now coming back into iconography. And in many cases, we've gotten like multiple iterations of icons, like different versions for different for different apps. And it's just you can see the story being told through that art. And so that's what it is. And the book also has the it's not a big textbook, but I wrote some stuff about how I do my work, which even though if your people not planning on becoming iconis, I think it gives them some lenses through which they can view and sort of enjoy the artwork in the book, we have artists spotlights, because there's a lot of people that's actually contributed to this field from around the world, designers, teams of designers. And so I wanted to sort of have have their story told, and, and so we can see some of the humans behind the art. So yeah, it's just sort of like a little beautiful art book, a little piece of piece of art history that many of us have lived and worked through.

Jeroen Leenarts: 31:40

Okay. And the form that wasn't one one minute, by the way. No, I sorry. So but and the form factor of the book, it's, well, you could describe it as, as hefty encyclopedic, right. It's, it's a big book junkie, lot of patients,

Michael Flarup: 31:55

I think, I think that might be like a common misconception, because it's, it's probably only gonna be like, 150 pages. So so so it's not like, it's not gonna be like a thick book. And it's actually also it's not an encyclopedia, because, really, we have less than 1000 book icons in the book, that might sound like a lot. But once you space them out the way that I've done it, it's actually not that much like, it's, I wanted each icon to like, I wanted to have some editorial decisions in there. And I wanted it to be interesting to explore and group the icons and the themes, and here's games, or here's utilities or whatnot. So it's not a big, thick, heavy book that that has every icon ever in it. It's much more sort of, sort of like an like, yeah, like a very, like carefully curated art book. Of course, yeah, it is a hardcover book, and it's gonna be really nice. Like, it's a it's a very high quality product. But, but yeah, it's not a yeah, not thick.

Jeroen Leenarts: 32:54

Yeah, it is something as if you're into iOS app development as a company, it would be a great article to have on your coffee table for visitors to your company to have just to thumb through and just have a look at while they're waiting to be to be talked to in their appointment, maybe, and also in your own bookshelf to have it available would be great, I think.

Michael Flarup: 33:20

Yeah, no, absolutely. Does. I also feel like there's one other thing that's become clear to me is that I, I've been I've been fighting this fight for a long time. But I think there is a, there's something to be said for design being having a lot of sameness these days. Sort of like a merging of styles. There's still trends and things. But we were, you know, people joke like which of these three apps are you designing right now? Which of these three websites are you making right now?

Jeroen Leenarts: 33:51

Or is there another color besides blue?

Michael Flarup: 33:53

Yeah, exactly. And, I mean, we can laugh at that. And I think there's great things that's come out of a new generation of designers that, that we've had a more of a democratic democratization of design, really, and a lot of the tools that we've gotten now are, are much easier for people to get into. And so Subsequently, we also have way more people in the design space, which you know, means that we hopefully should get more diverse stories, better representation. So all those things are great, but there is still like this nagging feeling of like a sameness in design. And I think a book like this is is an excellent like counterpoint to that, because you can really look back at 10 years of playfulness in icon design, and I can design is a very special little like constrained area where people sometimes play and play around with, you know, branding, and colors and concepts and things like that. And, and so I think, I think it's a it's the perfect place to, to, to create sort of the spark of imagination, and you can look back and maybe hopefully see that design can really be anything we want it to be.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:59

Yeah. Sounds like sounds like you have some thoughts on this and let you spend well over four years maybe even thinking about this. So if people want to know more about the book, where should they go? Go out by can book.com Okay, so they can't miss it. And well, just to dive in a little bit on your persona, you already mentioned here on there that you've been in the field for, like 15 years, if I'm correct. And is it like 15 years ago, the start of your career that you started professional software development in some capacity? Or was there more before

Michael Flarup: 35:32

that? So, I think I was always interested in doing creative work. And I think a lot of the stuff that I did initially was, you know, way, way back in the, you know, the like before the, like, the 2000s, of sort of just playing around my computer on my pirated version of Photoshop, and doing their questionable digital art and posting it to divine art or deviant art or some of these other sites. And I was just like, like, yeah, that's, that's how it started. And I was always interested in, you know, playing video games, as well, like a bit of a geek, you know, built my own computers and played a lot of video games, and was very inspired by video game aesthetics. And I think that's interesting, because it's something you can see in my work today, as well, if you look at some of my and my app, I can work for example, my visual design work, I think a lot of it has a video game quality to it, in terms of vibrancy and colors, and playfulness. And so that's always been like a thing thing that I've been into. And yeah, I started just doing, I thought I was going to be a software developer for a while there. And I did study computer science at university. And I found out that I was like the worst developer ever, I was just not a very talented programmer. But luckily, I could sort of make that make up for that with my visual design skills. And I'm not just I just kept pursuing things that I thought would be fun, right. And, and, and if you do that for long enough, people will eventually present different opportunities. So you will, you'll sort of open doors that will lead to other doors. And, and that's what I've done, I've just kept sort of revising and trying to figure out what it was that I thought was fun at the time. And that's that's led me to, to to become an an entrepreneur, as they say, just sort of making companies and because I had to, because if you if you want to get something done, you have to partner with other people. And, and you have to, you know, just kind of Yeah, relentlessly pursue some of these these ideas that you get.

Jeroen Leenarts: 37:42

Yeah, I can imagine because, but as you mentioned, you did like a lot of design work, then you try your hand at software development. But since that, sort of like sidestep into software development was all your work since then. mostly related to to something with software, or was also design work that was strictly non tech related.

Michael Flarup: 38:07

I think I mean, it's interesting, because I was always interested in the art side of things. And and even when you go back and see some of my questionable digital art, I tried to take some of that into the iconography that I did. And I think even today, like people will sometimes call my work like, you know, it's a little playful, and it's a little it has like, on the artsy side, sometimes, rather than sort of being strictly utilitarian. And so I think that's followed me all all through it. I've done a lot of different things like, I have designed print stuff for books and flyers for parties. I've just said yes to a lot of things. I've had a budding speaking career for a couple years. Because you know, once you have done this a few times, you, you get asked if you want to come to a local meetup and give a talk and you get paid and pizza and you say yes. And then someone from that audience asks, If you want to fly to Amsterdam to give a talk, and you say yes, then like, and so on, and so on. Right. And so, five years later, I'm like giving talks at Adobe MAX, the largest creativity conference. And so So that's been a part of my career. Again, just another example of saying yes to something because I thought that's a really interesting thing to do. The same with game development, in a sense, like, I made a bet, way, way back when I was a boy, even like, early teenager, I was just like, going to my friend's house and we had like this copy of a program called click and play. It was made by Max's that would later develop the Sims and things like that. It was like a tiny, like event based game engine where you had like a bitmap editor, like you do sprites in it, and then you could program it by sort of doing like event based programming, like really simple stuff. And so me and my friend, we would like make games for fun. And we even made like a fake company name like we would have like it was called Sun games, if I remember correctly. It's kind of funny. It's like I lost touch with that with with with my friend. grass was a long time ago, shout out to him, he was a great friend. And we had a lot of fun. But it's fun today like, today I get to run that run a small game studio, right? Because I still have that interest. And so there's been a lot of things where I think it's helped me to that I, you know, I studied computer science and learn some of the things today, it helps me better understand the developers that I work with. And also like the possibilities and the space. And I think it keeps me curious about new technologies and things that happen. But we've we've done work in mixed reality I've done work like in that's just sort of like pure art stuff. That's just like digital art. And then of course, all the iconography and all those things. So it's really a broad field of things. It's not, not one thing, just also grown as a CEO. That's another thing, like people are like, how do you do this? Like, I don't know, like, how do you manage people? How do you hire? How do you fire? How do you, you know, how do you strategize these things? As like, I don't know, let's try to see if we can figure it out together. Right.

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:16

That's the first time for everything, right?

Michael Flarup: 41:18

Yes. So it's a tricky question. You're asking me, that's what I'm trying to find out? Like, it's a little bit of everything. Right?

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:25

But But could you say that, that during your career that you in some way gain a benefit from doing all these kinds of different things that are somewhat still related to design work, that it allows you to stay stimulated to stay engaged with the things that you're working on? Oh,

Michael Flarup: 41:44

absolutely. I mean, bing, bing, I usually when people ask me what I do your dinner party, or whatever, and you're like, what do you do? Like, I can't even begin to explain the five different things I worked on today. But I just tell people that I'm a designer. And, and I think like, because I feel like makers kind of like a little contrived, right, but it that's you sort of lacking some words here, sometimes, like we just we make things or, but being a designer has definitely given me like the appetite to make things. And I learned very early on that if I could draw these things like on my computer, and they had value to other people, that's incredibly powerful, like, piece of learning that you get there, right, and you carry that with you, for the rest of your life. I, I imagine it's kind of the same with developers, and they write their first piece of like, bit of like code, and it does something and other people can use it. It's kind of the same with designers, I think you create something that has value to someone else, and you created it out of thin air. And, and just your imagination, and, and the tools at your disposal. And I think I know, it just that's that's always stuck with me through whatever that I'm doing. And these things cross pollinate. So you do one thing, you get good at something. For me, it's, for example, been iconography, it's, it's a good place to start with a conversation like this, like do a lot of app icons. Because to begin with, just because I thought it was fun. Later on, I get paid to do it. But it also sort of gave me an in with like, people that I would later start a company with or so. So it constantly leaps from one thing to the next. And so the your career really becomes like this long string of things, you said yes to things you chose to put some more time and effort into. And all those things are really interconnected in a way. And to me, it's, it all comes down to, you know, just being a visual designer and just being able to make things on my computer.

Jeroen Leenarts: 43:41

Sounds good. Yeah, just looking at the time, I think it's we're already approaching the end of our hour that we had together. I know you're very busy today. And there's much more stuff that you need to do this week. So I just want to thank you for your time, Michael.

Michael Flarup: 44:01

Thank you for having me.

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:02

So if people want to know more about your book app icon, book.com if they want to know more about your company, that's north play.co. North a.co Yeah, yeah, that's Yeah. Yeah. And is there anything else that you wanted to have people have a look at?

Michael Flarup: 44:20

Well, I mean, like 15 different projects, right. But no, mostly it's just, like just my, my, um, just my last name on Twitter. At flareup. A Philly are up my websites also flareup.co which is sort of I try to sometimes collect stuff there. But yeah, Twitter is like probably the best place to reach out if anyone have any, any questions or comments or anything like

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:45

that. Okay, well,

Michael Flarup: 44:46

I always enjoy. I always enjoy hearing from people that listen to the podcast episode, because I am not good at this myself either. I want to remind myself to if you if you listen to a conversation that somehow that you got something from just right now just go to Twitter, like move over and the taps on your phone or whatever, go to Twitter, just send me a tweet and be like, Hey, I have this question. Just whatever you whatever you're thinking,

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:12

yeah, that's I think that's one of the best things about design work, but also software development, just having people tell you what to think about the things that you did, and the thoughts that you have. And yeah, with that, Michael, thank you for your time. Good luck. At the end of the week, I think it'll work out and I look forward to see the book in person because I think it will be great. Thank you.