Designer Interview | Paul Jansen

Today for our blog article series Designer Interview we have Paul Jansen with us who designs under the name Flat Icons. He is known famously for his over the top yet eye pleasing icon style and the way he portrays his imagination is just commendable.

We have asked him a few questions about his journey as a designer. How his early life affected him and ultimately what inspired him as a designer. Let's know from him how does he create his designs and lots other. Enjoy!

1. Hi! Paul, Tell us a little bit about yourself? What made you want to become a designer?

Hey guys! I’m actually not a designer myself. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about design but to be honest, I don’t even know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator.

I run a portfolio of websites but I started the graphic design business in 2014. I purchased the website flat-icons.com from its previous owner and build it out from 1 part-time designer at the time to a team of 30 currently. We focus mostly on icon design and colored icons are our thing. At first, we only designed in a flat style, but we’ve expanded that to other styles.

2. How would you describe your style?

Everyone on our team has their own style of course, but in general we’re strong in original concepts and colorful styles. We believe in details as the saying goes that small small details makes every design different and unique. The over the top yet eye pleasing style and the way our designer's portrays his imagination is just amazing to witness.

3. Where do you find inspiration for new designs?

The designers get their inspiration from anywhere. Icon design is very closely related to everyday life you see. Talking about myself I read a lot of trend reports because I love to stay on top of trends and be among the first to spot a new trend. I know usually people see references on Pinterest, Dribbble, and others but I get inspired from my environment. Therefore, I often pay attention to things around and get inspired to make icons.

4. What pieces of work you most proud of and why?

3D is an upcoming trend and as I mentioned I like to keep up to the trend and keep up with the market. I really like our 3D illustrations. We started with these only a few months ago, but this is something we’d like to focus more of our time and energy on. Soon we are gonna be more active there too.

5. What made you want to become a contributor to Iconscout?

We were approached by Iconscout. Although we might not have been approached by quite a number of people requesting us to join marketplaces and we said ‘no’ quite often but when Iconscout did they seemed serious and with a good plan to grow their marketplace. Not only they wanted to grow alone, they wanted to grow with them. This sincerity is what made us join Iconscout. It seems you guys are living up to that expectation!

6. What are the benefits you have received by uploading your work?

For us Iconscout is an extra opportunity to reach a bigger audience and additional sales. Additional sales means more money for us. Through the large audience of Iconscout this helps me to reach more people who want to use icons that I created. I'm sure Iconscout will grow more in the coming time. We look forward to our growth with them.

7. What advice do you have for future Iconscout contributors?

Just uploading a few icons and call it a day won’t work. You need to be consistent and go for bigger numbers. Of course without forgetting to deliver top quality with each and every icon. Creating a quality and unique product. So, one must always practice every day no matter what because your best work may not be created in one try. It's the hard work that will determine everything at the end!

8. Please share your future plans. I saw you are cooking illustrations and 3D too.

That’s correct! We’re expanding to different products besides icons. As you said, we’re dipping our toes in 3D illustrations but we also expanded our collection with fonts and a lot of presentation templates. We actually juts launched our presentation template website Graphue.com, where we offer templates for each occasion in PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides.

We’re also planning to do more with animated icons. We launched a few animated icon sets and the plan is to animate a lot more of our sets.

9. Three things you like about Iconscout?

There are lot of things but counting top three things I like about Iconscout here it goes:

1. The ambition to grow into a huge marketplace
2. Your decision to expand to other design products
3. The personal attention from the founder Mohit. He seems very involved, which    is great!

Thank you for sharing your experience with us, Paul! If you like his work, visit his profile now by clicking the following contributor link. You can check other designers interview here. We will be back with another interview soon. Till then Happy Designing!