Why Is The Noun Project API Significant?

The Noun Project recently launched their API, and after getting off the phone just now with a publication, I looked to see if I had written it up—I hadn’t. I had a lot of thoughts in an Evernote, but I had not really shared my thoughts on why I think The Noun Project API is significant.

If you hadn’t noticed, I use The Noun Project a lot across the API Evangelist Network. Not all of my images are directly from The Noun Project, but they reflect they same general approach. I use The Noun Project for two main reasons:

  1. On-boarding Users With Abstract Concepts - It can be hard to convey the often abstract concepts around APIs, and a single, concise image really goes a long way in bringing a user quickly up to speed with what I’m talking about.
  2. Simple & Minimalist - The Noun Project images just look good with the overall API Evangelist look and feel. I don’t think this stops with just my website, I think a simple, minimalist image goes a long way in blending in with any site, without cluttering the overall look.

When publishing content online, whether its blogging or publishing a list of local events, it can be difficult to capture and keep the attention of your audience. A simple, concise image can go a long way to help convey the meaning of a blog post, event listing, or other content, and on-board users with what you are dishing up, and this is where The Noun Project comes in.

The Noun Project gives you an API to search, pull and manage simple image representations for a person, place, thing, animal or idea. I use a single Noun Project image to accompany each blog post, as well as other elements of my work such as API building blocks, and tools. The API allows me to integrate images in this way, seamlessly within my content management system.

While I use the Noun Project API to pull meaningful images to accompany my content, there are unlimited uses for the image API, allowing developers to weave the images into their own sites and applications, and potentially extend the images to the end-users of their applications, to accompany their own user generated content.

There are hundreds of image APIs currently available, but The Noun Project API is significant because it providers developers with a very focused, meaningful, but powerful way to represent a person, place, thing, animal or ideas in their sites and applications.