The smallest detail in any website being designed can affect the entirety of the project, knowing that these small details could also play an important role in the bigger picture.
Icons, most especially, have taken on a whole new level of importance as people become more mobile and the need to make things more compact arises.
Understanding Icons
What are these icons for? Well, icons actually have a pretty wide scope, depending on how you look at it. See those little boxes on your smartphone that represent different applications? Those are icons.
Did you notice those little boxes on your favorite website, that, when clicked, would trigger a new action such as open a new email window or identify a link being promoted, such as a Twitter or a Facebook profile? These are all icons.
The word ‘icon’, when taken from the dictionary, is defined as a representative or symbol of something. Its digital definition does not lie far from this, as a computer icon is a small picture that represents a program or an object within the system.
The Rise of the Icons
When did icons become important? Basically, when Windows-based programs started, the need to have something small and simple to click became a rising need.
Older computer system would need a command typed into the system for anything to happen. With windows-based systems however, it was as simple as aiming that mouse pointer on the right object, clicking it, and voila, a new window opens up.
Because of the way these icons made things a whole lot easier, their use became an instant norm in all things digital. Today, a lot of younger computer and mobile users cannot even imagine what the world was like when icons were not around. Because of the value they add to modern technology, it has become a constant in almost everything.
This is why one of the important things that web developers consider is their choice of icons in every new website being designed.
Icons should be straightforward enough to show the user directly what they are for, but it would also be helpful if they were creatively designed to add that pop into an otherwise functional and practical part of any page.
Best Free Icon Websites
Although designers can create their own icons, there are also a number of sites that allow you to download amazing icons for free, both for personal and for commercial use.
Here are some of them:
Flaticon
A search engine for over 8.8 million vector icons & stickers.
Freepik
Freepik helps you to find free vector art, illustrations, icons, PSD and photos for commercial and personal purposes.
Find Icons
A database of over 475,000+ icons.
The Noun Project
Thousands of glyph icons from different artists. Some icons are free and some for a fee.
Font Awesome
Scalable vector icons and CSS toolkit.
Skycons
Simple animated weather glyphs.
Icons8
The world’s largest original set of free icons for Windows8 and iOS.
Ionicons
An open-sourced and MIT licensed icon pack.
Evil Icons
Simple and clean SVG icon pack.
Icono
Icono is a CSS icon pack.
Icon Archive
Search through more than 588000 free icons.
Iconmonstr
A large collection of glyph icons from a German artist. Free to use without attribution and free to modify.
Icon Finder
More than 100,000 free icons in one place.
