For some reason there is a whole thread on this seemingly simple tasks. In a bootstrapped Laravel 5.4 instance the following worked for me.
npm install font-awesome
// resources/assets/sass/app.scss
// Font Awesome
@import "node_modules/font-awesome/scss/font-awesome";
Add the following to your elixir config in the gulpfile.
.copy('node_modules/font-awesome/fonts', 'public/fonts')
If you run gulp
you should be able to now start using font-awesome everywhere in your app.
yarn add font-awesome
@import "~font-awesome/scss/font-awesome";
in you mix file:
.copy('node_modules/font-awesome/fonts', 'public/fonts')