# Steve Schoger

> Steve Schoger is a Canadian visual designer and partner at Tailwind Labs, best known for co-authoring Refactoring UI with Adam Wathan - a book and video course that generated over $2.5 million in sales by teaching developers how to design beautiful interfaces. He built a 127K+ Twitter following by sharing meticulous, practical design tips, and created widely-used free resources including Heroicons, Zondicons, and Hero Patterns. His work sits at the intersection of design education and developer tools, making professional UI design accessible to programmers worldwide.

- **Role:** Designer and Partner at Tailwind Labs
- **Organizations:** Tailwind Labs, Duke Street Studio Inc.
- **From:** Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
- **Nationality:** Canadian
- **Known for:** Co-authored Refactoring UI, generating over $2.5 million in sales, Grew Twitter/X following from under 2,000 to 127,300+ followers through design tips, Created Heroicons - widely used MIT-licensed SVG icon library adopted by the web community

## Career timeline

- **2000s** — Started designing for the web in the early 2000s
- **2010s** — Worked as UI Graphic Designer at Desire2Learn
- **2010s** — Worked as Senior UI/UX Designer at Sun Life Financial
- **2016** — Founded Duke Street Studio Inc. as principal/owner
- **2017** — Began sharing viral design tips on Twitter, growing from under 2,000 followers
- **2018** — Spoke at Fluxible Conference with '15 Practical Tips for Cheating at Design'
- **2018-2019** — Spoke at Laracon conferences
- **2018** — Released Zondicons free SVG icon set
- **2018** — Released Hero Patterns free SVG background patterns
- **2019** — Co-authored and launched Refactoring UI with Adam Wathan
- **2019** — Spoke at SmashingConf SF 2019 on Refactoring UI strategies
- **2020** — Joined Tailwind Labs as designer and partner; Heroicons released
- **2022** — Spoke at SmashingConf New York 2022 on icon creation using Figma
- **2025** — Announced plans to reboot the Refactoring UI YouTube channel

## Achievements

- Co-authored Refactoring UI, generating over $2.5 million in sales
- Grew Twitter/X following from under 2,000 to 127,300+ followers through design tips
- Created Heroicons - widely used MIT-licensed SVG icon library adopted by the web community
- Created Zondicons - free premium SVG icon set
- Created Hero Patterns - popular free collection of repeatable SVG background patterns
- Partner at Tailwind Labs, which generated over $4 million in revenue within 2 years
- Speaker at SmashingConf, Laracon, Fluxible, and other major design/dev conferences
- Built Duke Street Studio as an independent design consultancy

## Latest updates

- **2025-01** — Announced plans to reboot the Refactoring UI YouTube channel and solicited community input for redesign examples
- **2022-10** — Spoke at SmashingConf New York 2022 on icon creation techniques using Figma
- **2020-01** — Tailwind UI launched and reached $2 million in revenue within 5 months

## Links

- Website: https://www.steveschoger.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-schoger-1298831b/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/steveschoger
- GitHub: https://github.com/sschoger
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxqiDtkXtOCNJdckODHk9YA

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/steve-schoger
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-20