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Stock Icons: An Overview

By Smashing Editorial, October 20th, 2006 in Graphics | 18 Comments | Forum

Whether you develop a software application, write an Ajaxified web-app or design a Web 2.0-stylish site, you can’t get away from tiny, small, nice and extremely helpful icons, which make the text more readable and present the information more vividly. Some icon sets can be downloaded for free. But the most beautiful ones have their price - in the end, there is a lot of time, work and creativity involved. The so called Stock Icon Sets are usually the collections of specific icons, which stand for particular themes such as Shopping, Traveling, Medicine etc. In this context “royalty-free” means that the acquired icons can be used for personal and commerical projects without any further costs. However, different companies have different license terms, so before using the icons they’re offering you better make sure the license agreement is OK. In order to attract the attention of web-developers, some icon designers present free samples of icon sets for free download. Let’s take a look what is actually offered. Links checked: May/19 2008.

Awicons

Axialis

D-Icons

DevComponents

Fast Icon

glyFX

Glyph Lab

Guiicons

Horizon Icon Collection

Icon Base

IconBuffet

Iconbulk

Icon Department

Screenshot

IconExperience

Iconfish

iconflash

Iconica Custom Icons

Iconkits

IconPacks

IconPharm

Iconshock

Icon Vector

Screenshot

Med Designs

MicroICO

orangeicons

Screenshot

StockIcons

TastyStock

Uiicons

VirtualLNK

vistamax icons

wackypixel

Screenshot

Wati Works

Published in Graphics, October 20th, 2006
Tags: downloads, icons, licence, royalty-free, stockicons

1.

David (October 21st, 2006, 12:06 am)

not so easy to choose a name for a stock-icon-website… or have you ever seen such a number of variations of the word “icon” ;-)
2.

bugy (May 22nd, 2007, 1:07 am)

I love iconkits’ and wackypixel’s simplicity. On the other hand, VirtualLNK has a great design, too, but way too expensive.
The other one I bumped on today on your site has some great works for way less money: Link [www.itookia.com]
3.

Professional Icons by VirtualLNK (August 15th, 2007, 6:00 am)

Well I would have to say you get what you pay for. If you want the best quality then you will pay a little more for it.
4.

Syed Balkhi (August 21st, 2007, 9:18 pm)

yeah even though they are expensive they are quality so i guess it is worth it.

Do they use Adobe Illustrator to make these or what ??? Always wondered
5.

Jeff (August 31st, 2007, 3:53 am)

virtual lnk ones are soooooooooo gorgeous, i used them on a website before using them elsewhere but i used photoshops saturation thingy to get htem all looking the same as my colour scheme
6.

Mark (November 16th, 2007, 2:33 am)

Great icons!, you can check the ganato stock icons, they are vector and looks really nice. Link [www.ganato.com]
7.

dave (November 18th, 2007, 5:54 am)

Another site with really nice vector stock icons
Link [www.deliciousicons.com]
8.

Marco (September 22nd, 2008, 2:11 am)

take a look at these stock icons too Link [www.icojoy.com]. Big choice!
9.

oblifirlvor (March 31st, 2009, 3:25 pm)

Мухахахаха, да вы у нас философ аффтар?
10.

Free Vector Download (April 19th, 2009, 6:52 pm)

Nice icons list..
11.

David (June 12th, 2009, 11:58 pm)

Best stock icons from Seanau!!!
Link [www.seanau.com]