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Stock Icons: An Overview
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
IconExperience
Iconfish
iconflash
Iconica Custom Icons
Iconkits
IconPacks
IconPharm
Iconshock
Icon Vector
Med Designs
MicroICO
orangeicons
StockIcons
TastyStock
Uiicons
VirtualLNK
vistamax icons
wackypixel
Wati Works
The Co-Founder of Smashing Magazine. Former writer, web designer, freelancer and webworker. Author of several books. Runs the business.
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- 2May 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: Itookia.com - 3August 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.
- 4August 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
- 5August 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
- 6November 18th, 2007 5:54 am
Another site with really nice vector stock icons
http://www.deliciousicons.com - 7
- 8March 31st, 2009 3:25 pm
Мухахахаха, да вы у нас философ аффтар?
- 9April 19th, 2009 6:52 pm
Nice icons list..
- 10
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- 12October 21st, 2009 11:15 am
Icondrawer Classic 512 icon set. 120 high quality icons with max size 512×512 px for latest versions of Mac OS X and Windows Vista systems. Icons are perfect for software toolbar, web site, GUI design or presentations.
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- @ilmv oh ok then ;)
- @ilmv no, the SM Book will not be out of date :) We made sure it contains universal design, usability and marketing principles.
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- @HrvojeKC yes, that's an interesting idea. Maybe when the waiting is over, we'll write a detailed post about it.
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” ;-)