There is a new wonderful coffee table book for a certain type of person, in which the Venn diagram of people who would enjoy it and this type of site is pretty overlappy: The iOS App Icon Book.

It’s by Michael Flarup, but a lot of the content originates from Jim Nielsen‘s iOS Icon Gallery, so they worked together on this heavily. The two of them were over on the Postlight Podcast the other day talking about it. The whole thing felt like a fun crossover event for me, since Jim is a web dude who runs in my circles, Postlight is a podcast I love full of tech luminaries, and I hired Michael for a weird side project icon one time.

I perk up at little statements like this, about eight and a half minutes into the podcast:

I wrote this person who kept featuring my work for many years. I remember just shooting him off an email while I was at swim practice with my then 5 year old. I was like “this is probably a long shot, but I’ll just ask this nice guy if he wants to help me make a book.”

And then… they did.

That’s why this idea of email is so important to me. I relate to that moment as so many good things in my professional life have been a result of getting or sending an email like that. And I feel like those moments are less likely to happen if email to you is a chore, a burden, a place you want to avoid at all costs, rather than embrace.