6 Websites to Go for Free Web Icons
Every web designer or developer will tell you how useful icons are to increase the authentic look of a site and draw visitor attention to important elements. Icons can be used in a number of ways: as part of the logo, highlight important area on the page, illustrate concept, represent person or simply be used as a picture adding an interesting touch to the overall appearance of a site. High-quality icons make website look professional and make its content attractive for the readers to follow. However, hiring a professional graphic designer to make icons seems quite an expensive way of incorporating these important elements in the layout of your website. At times, this is not an easy thing to do yourself as well, especially if you are not a designer. In such circumstances, you may wish to drop the idea of having icons altogether, which is certainly not a wise decision.
Luckily for us Internet is a great place to get things for free if you know where to look. A number of websites provide possibility to get high quality web icons for free. Below is handpicked list of best resources that all together boast 500 000+ marvelous icons.
IconFinder
Based on a search engine format, IconFinder is a great site with ever-growing library that offers high quality icons to web designers and developers. In addition to icon designs, the website also provides tools and important information through its blog relating all the aspects of icons. Users can search for the icons that they want from a wide selection of designs, styles and colors. The website is a popular destination to download icons from, with millions of icons downloaded every month.
Find Icons
FindIcons is another search based website that allows you to search well over 300,000 icons with its search filtering and result matching system. It claims to have the largest free icons collection. The best thing about it is that it tracks the search results of each query and adjusts them according to the ratings given by the users.
IconsPedia
IconPedia is another popular destination to download free icons which are organized according to categories. IconsPedia features flexible search with extended license filtering. The website features an exclusive member’s area where people can comment on icons and share information relating free icons. The blog provides latest news and reviews about designs, icons, tools and tutorials.
Icons etc.
Icons etc offers a wide range of free icons that you can use freely. The icons are categorized into different styles and designs; whereas, new designs are added frequently. Currently, it offers 128,743 free icons and clipart stock images that can be used for web design, application design, graphic design, and for other designing purposes.
Icon Seeker
IconSeeker is a simpler website that offers a collection of over 50,000 free icons to download. Each icon comes in PNG, ICO and ICNS formats for all Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Most of the free icons available on this website can be used for non-commercial activities. However, you have to get permission for some icons as some of them are copyrighted.
PixelGirl Presents
PixelGirl Presents offers attractive Mac OS and Window icons that of course can be used for web production. It also has a collection of tutorials, articles and links that designers can benefit from. The icons and images available on this website are copyrighted, and thus, require permission for commercial use but if you really like the design and wish to use it for your website or blog, it is best to contact the author who most of the time will be able to give you the permission to use his work if you give some type of credit – mentioning his name, blogging about his work, linking to his website, recommending to a friend.
Even though majority of resources listed above allow commercial use of their icons please make sure you check licensing requirements as some of the icons may require recognition of the author aka link to their website or be allowed for non-commercial use only. Just be sure to check that the work you are copying is not copyrighted; but if it is, then make sure you ask prior permission from the designer before using it. This will ensure that you remain protected from copyright infringement issues. Although in most cases, you will end up finding free icons that will not have any copyright issues, and which you can use freely.
So now if you need free icons for your website, you know where to find them.
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