Its not groundbreaking, it's just a condensed package of foundational knowledge that you'd be expected to understand implicitly. It's just a nice overview, all

Its not groundbreaking, it's just a condensed package of foundational knowledge that you'd be expected to understand implicitly. It's just a nice overview, all in one short book, that's all. It's a different category of thing. The article is a technical overview of the way a single designer creates icons with a specific tool. The book isn't practical tips [well it is, but not at all the same] If you're not interested in designing and just want to, say, add some icons to a set and call it a day, then that's fine It's just, if you want to actually get very good at...anything I guess, there are base level skills and knowledge that you have to be able to unconsciously apply. eg for a similar field, when learning to draw, you need to understand perspective, composition, effect of light. You do things like draw people without looking at the paper, over and over and over again. Or draw light hitting solids: spheres or cubes or pyramids. That's kinda the bulk of what you do for quite a long time. And I think that basically applies to most fields. If you are not that interested in mastering it, then just following a step by step tutorial will get you a result, but it's just not the same thing -- there's nothing wrong with it, it just is what it is. Edit: I think the article is great! I really liked the explanation of his process, it's really useful, I don't want to trivialise it. In-depth breakdowns of process by skilled people who know what they are doing are great