I've been receiving a few emails lately asking me for some of the web design resources that I personally use. Well, I'd like to start sharing my resources with our readers so today, I've gathered up a collection of the icon sets that I have personally downloaded and use on a daily basis.
One thing that I've emphasized before is to have a collection of resources at your disposal. There are a lot of different icons out there and choosing which ones to download and save in your resources can be difficult. I used to just be download happy and download every icon set that I found and I found that to be very ineffective as I would still end up having to sort through hundreds of folders looking for the right icons.
Well, in this post, I’d like to share some of my favorite icon sets that are available for download. And guess what, they are all free!
My favorite Icon Sets
spirit20
This excellent icon set consists of almost 500 transparent PNGs at 20×20 pixels, and is completely free to use for both personal and commercial projects. No attribution is required.
Isloo
These fantastic icons are from Icon Finder. You can use them in any project you like. They were designed by the talented Asher Abbasi. The freebie consists of 50 beautiful icons. The icons are all colorful and detailed and can by used in any commercial project - just don't redistribute without written permission.
Toolbar Icon Set
This free set comes with 35 icons that you can use in your website design. The icons are very detailed and looks great and it's great to use especially if you want icons that aren't too big or small.
Boolean
These icons are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. The set took over one month to make. Now, Its all up to your creativity, the metaphors depicted here aren't meant to be used as is, you can give them your own spin, like the Binocular for Search, Legos for Add-Ons/Plugins, Tree for directory tree, what have you. If you want to use them without attribution in your commercial works, then send an email to prax08@gmail.com
PixeloPhilia2
A very nice icon set that I just recently found. The icons contained in this set are very useful and this set is a must-have for any web designer.
Corner Stone
This set from Iconlicious is just that, delicious. Although there’s not too many icons in this set, it’s still a very useful collection.
Icon Sweets
IconSweets is a free icon set containing 60 vector Photoshop shapes, influenced by icon sets such as Glyphish and Pictoico. You may use these icons for both commercial and non-commercial projects and customize them any way you like.
WooFunction
The WooFunction Icon Set includes 178 amazing web-related icons in a sophisticated and glossy design style. All 178 icons are available as 32×32 pixel PNG files and they are indeed pixel-perfect. If you have an in-depth look at the individual icons, you’ll notice that a lot of time was spent paying attention to the finer details, which means that this is a really classy icon set.
Gentleface Toolbar Icons
These icons can be used for wireframes and software mockups creation, websites and software applications toolbars and menus including iPhone and iPod apps. You'll find a set of 8 cursors and 236 icons in black and white color versions. The icons include pagination arrows, ratings and voting controls, social interaction symbols file system and text editor actions. The entire set totals 244 original icons optimized for 16x16 pixel size and available in 16x16, 32x32 and 48x48 pixel sizes.
Komodo Media Social Network Icons
These social media icons, created by Rogie King are just perfect. I can't even name the number of times that I have used these icons in my web projects. Definitely something that will be extra helpful to any web designer.
Default Icon
Default Icon is a repository of free icons in their simplest form. It can be used even on portable devices (iPhone, iPad, android compatible devices etc) with minimum capabilites as the resolution is 1-bit and fully customizable as there is an eps version present. Available for download in .eps, .png, .gif formats, in black and white colors, in sizes 16x16, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256.
Pictodeck
Pictodeck is a set of over 700 pictograms in vector format designed specifically for Keynote. That means you can rescale them to any size you desire without any loss in quality. All of the icons also support transparency.
Glyphish
This icon set was designed and carefully optimized for use on toolbars and tab bars in iPhone & iPad apps, they're also perfect for Android apps, websites, t-shirts more.
Iconic
Iconic is a minimal set of icons consisting of 120 marks in raster and vector formats — free for public use.
Mini Icon Collection
Here are 113 10x10 greyscale icons in .gif format to use in your next design. Perfect for those small areas where you need to use an icon.
Sanscons
Sanscons was design specifically for you to use CSS with them. Due to their transparent background, you can apply any color or background image to them for a more custom fit. Styling the icons takes only a basic understanding of CSS.
Sweetie-Basepack
The Sweetie family is cute and clean. And free! This set has been around for five years, but it's still going strong. So far its been downloaded over 50,000 times, and is seen all over the web on great projects like BuddyPress, Rock Paper Shotgun, and VLC.
Circular Icon Set
A themed collection of 100+ 16×16 icons in alpha PNG format. Circular is free to use for whatever you like without attribution – the only thing that the creators ask is that you don’t distribute them yourself!
LED Icon Set
The LED Icon Set was designed for web designers/developers by Aleksandr Kozmenko. These .png icons make a professionally looking icon set and it is totally free.
Quartz
Quartz is an icon set that contains 90 simple and stylish icons. Dedicated to the blogoshpere, Quartz Icon Pack has numerous types of icons: files, folders, charts, books, boxes, social networking sites, email etc. All icons are free to use for personal and commercial projects.
Lullacons
These icons are made to work on any background and in any browser. (Note the 32x32 large icons only work well on lighter backgrounds). They are in 8-bit PNG format, with 1-bit transparency. Worry not about IE compatibility, which has full support for 1-bit transparency in PNGs. IE/Win only does not support alpha-transparency in 24-bit PNGs (but will be supported in IE7). If that was over your head, don't worry. Just rest easy knowing that these icons work in any browser.
Chalkwork HTML
Chalkwork HTML is a free set of HTML-themed icons. Featuring 31 graphical representations of common markup elements, this is a completely free icon set available for personal and commercial projects alike.
Twotiny
The twotiny icon set was created for us in websites and web applications. The set features many diferent icons with a few color variations.
Silk
“Silk” is a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons in strokably-soft PNG format. Containing a large variety of icons, you're sure to find something that tickles your fancy. And all for a low low price of $0.00. You can't say fairer than that.
Mini Icons
Another free set offered by famfamfam, “Mini” is a set of 144 GIF icons available for free use for any purpose.
Bonus: Iconza
Here's a very useful site. Iconza is a collection of free icons that can be colored and reduced in size to your taste. If you are a happy site or blog owner, you will be able to pick icons that will fit right into your design.
Additional Resources
Still didn't find the right icons for your project? Then try searching through these sites to find the right fit for your project.
Icon Search
- Icon Finder
- Find Icons
- Icon Seeker
- Iconlet
- Icon Look
While having a great collection of icons is necessary for a web designer, knowing when and how to use these icons will be beneficial as well. Here are some great articles online that deal with this subject.
Articles About the Use of Icons
- How To Use Icons To Support Content In Web Design
- Icons and the Web: Why they Matter
- Making the Most of Icons in Web Design
- Icons
- How To Use Icons On Your Web Site
- Are your icons working for you?
- Icon Semiotics: A Common Visual Representation
- Learning to Love the Pixel: Exploring the Craft of Icon Design
Well, I hope that this post was helpful to you. I will try to share more of my resources in future posts. By the way, did I miss any new icon sets that would be useful for web designers? Then go ahead and share it with us in the comments. And while you're at it, you can subscribe to the RSS feed here.