Here is a great resource when you need icons for your website, blog or other design projects. There are many great collections of icons available on the web. We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite sources. Enjoy…
Icon Collections:
famfamfam.com: 700+ Icon Collection
A great collection of free icons created by UK-based web developer developer Mark James. Mark’s icon collection is an remarkable collection of over 700(!) 16-by-16 pixel icons that covers a wide range of needs.
This free Grayscale icon set includes forty free icons which can be used for application toolbars, content management systems, web applications, anything you want.
150+ clean and clear icons to use in your web design. They are licensed under a Creative Commons license, so commercial use is fine. Also feel free to make derivatives with the included Photoshop documents.
Markup: Minimalist Icon Collections
A series of clean, simple black and white icons from a German wweb developer. The icons are free for private or commercial use. Collection include simple arrows, document icons, simple web navigation icons, and others.
graphicPUSH: Free icon sets for web designers.
These icons are designed specifically for blogs and content management systems. A free version contains ten core icons that will get you rolling on your site with the basics like commenting, categories and more. The $12 deluxe version includes forty designs in four different color schemes — in total, 160 icons.
IconBuffet: Free Monthly Icons via Email
IconBuffet sells hundreds of royalty free collections of icons. It’s a commercial stock library that focuses on icons. We’re including them in our “free icons” list because they do send out a free collection of stock icons to people who sign up for their “free delivery” email.
The Yellow Icon : Free Icons Collections from Many Artists
A huge number of icons collections from a wide number of artists. These icons are primarily intended for use as computer icons — although there is no reason they could not be used on websites.
IconBAZAAR. Icon Clipart of the 90’s.
The IconBAZAAR collection is a large dated collection of 90’s icon clipart. Permission is granted for limited personal use of up to twenty images. We probably would have left this collection off our list — except (for no justifiable reason) this animated icon of a caffeine molecule caught our eye.
There are 21 icons in this set. They were specifically designed for use with a contact management system of some sort, but obviously you can use them for what you like, as they’re fairly generic icons.
Some Random Dude: Bitcons & Sancons
Bitcons is a mini-pixel icon set (16×16 pixels) containing 121 individual red icons for various subjects. Bitcons is intended to be a very hypo-styled icon set; allowing for broad use for design on the web. Don’t like red? A spin-off collection called Sanscons was created with white icons to allow for any color and many different shapes.
MaxPower: The motherload list of Free Icons!
MaxPower maintains a great updated list of free icon collections from all over the web. Most of the collections listed here are included in MaxPower’s list. They also put a lot of effort into identifying what type of licensing agreement each collection of icons requires. (Note: We found the MaxPower list part of the way through building our own collection — but we must credit them with not only turning us onto new sources of free icons we might have otherwise missed, but also providing the visual inspiration for the opening graphic in this blog entry).
Free Marketing Tip for Designers:
Looking for a way to draw more visitors to your website or blog? Here is a great marketing tip from the Maxpower blog which gets a lot of traffic:
I made this list because I too have been looking for icons… I had no idea this many people would be interested. Crazy. Attn artists: would you like 1000’s of people to view your work? Make a free icon set and publish it. Who knew?
