Jim Nielsen

Web Generalist: Design, Code, Writing

About

I love the web.

I think the web browser is the most influential piece of software ever written.

I seek to be at its intersection of art and engineering.

Contact

Email
jimniels@gmail.com
Twitter
@jimniels
Mastodon
@jimniels@mastodon.social
GitHub
jimniels
LinkedIn
Click here

Writing

Passion Project, 2010–Present

My Blog

I write to seek clarity and improve my thinking.

My blog is well-respected in the industry and linked by social sites, publications, and newsletters such as ShopTalkShow, Smashing Magazine, Changelog, JavaScript Weekly, Frontend Focus, Sidebar.io, An Event Apart, HeyDesigner, CSS Tricks, Hacker News, Lobste.rs, and more.

Praise For My Blog

Published Articles

I prefer to publish and own my content, but occasionally write for others. I keep a list for posterity’s sake (please excuse any link rot, hence my preference for owning my content).

View all

iOS, macOS, and watchOS Icon Galleries

Passion Project, 2010–Present

About

For over a decade I’ve been designing, developing, curating, and blogging about my gallery showcasing beautiful icons from Apple’s ecosystem.

Praise For The Galleries

The Book

Recruited by world-class iconist Michael Flarup, I helped design, curate, and write The iOS App Icon Book: a celebration and preservation of the art and history of iOS app icon design.

The book’s initial run was funded on KickStarter at roughly $130,000 by 1,450 backers and received overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Praise For The Book

The Archives

Miscellaneous Side Projects, 2012–Present

Flying J Pies

I love a good pie. Like anything you care about to a level others might deem absurd: if you want it done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. So, I make my own pies and document each one.

canistilluse.com

A satirical website made to illustrate the problems of a world where habitul breakage on the web platform becomes accepted as the price of progress.

Readlists

Recreating the idea behind the incredibly useful, but now defunct, service Readlists. All design and development done by me — bugs aren’t mine though.

TeamColors

A color reference for favorite sporting teams across various profressional leagues (made in a hackathon and later updated).

Gimmie Dat iCon

A tool to retrieve full-sized icon artwork for any app in the App Store (based on a tutorial published for Web Design Tuts+).

Logo Integrity

In A Designer’s Art, Paul Rand asks: “How far out of focus can an image be and still be recognized?” For fun, I built an experiment to find out.

SassMe

A tool made to visualize Sass color functions in real-time, no compilation required. Loved by folks all over the industry:

Employment

Designed & Built My First Website in 1998

Preface

More than any job title, project, or company, I’m proud of the people with whom I’ve worked— inpsiring, charismatic, curious, endearing, introspective, wise, unassuming, artistic, amiable, selfless, humane, honest, delightful, and sincere people.

A Short List

I should make these longer and more descriptive of the transformative work I did, but I’m too busy making new stuff.

Company names link to corresponding writeups from my blog.