Things I learned while building an icon library

Building an icon library taught me about fuzzy search, Levenshtein distance, and keyword mapping

I didn't know how to code. I was just a designer. But I had one big problem: Finding and customizing icons was painful.

I had to open many websites, search, download, clean the file, fix it, then put it in Figma. And make sure about attribution. Then do it all over again for every icon. It was slow and boring. It broke my flow every time.

So I asked myself:

What if there was just one place with all the icons? And what if I could change the size or color right there and paste it into Figma?

No clue how, but I made it 💯. I used Iconify API to fetch 20M+ icons and 250+ premium libraries. All in one place. You can customize size, stroke, color, copy-paste, and see which icons need attribution.

Later, I even made a Figma plugin. Now thousands of designers use it. That still feels crazy to me.

While building this, I found some coding words I had never heard before. Three of them stayed with me:

1. Fuzzy Search

Imagine you write setings with one "t" missing. The computer still shows the settings icon. That's fuzzy search. It's like the computer says: "I know what you mean!"

2. Levenshtein Distance

This word is long, but the idea is small. It tells you how many changes you need to turn one word into another.

Example: you type nate instead of note. The computer changes a to o. Just one change. Distance = 1.

It's like autocorrect for icons.

3. Keyword Mapping

This is about "other names" like synonyms. Type gear, you still see the settings icon. Type trash, you see delete.

Easy trick, but very useful.

What I took away

I started knowing nothing. Couldn't even open a terminal. But curiosity pushed me through.

I didn't know coding. I only had curiosity.

By trying, I found new words and new ideas and made something real that people use.

Now 4,000+ designers use the app. Thousands more use the plugin.

The best way to learn is by fixing a problem you care about. You'll either make it work or learn something new along the way.

Sometimes you don't need to know everything. You just need to start.

Check out the icon library: