Freebies Round-Up: Icons, Buttons and Templates

• By Sven Lennartz
• May 24th, 2007
• Badges, Buttons, Downloads
• 158 Comments

Visual design elements can considerably improve the readability of the page. Using them, you can make it easier for your users to scan the presented content and find the information they’re actually looking for. Icons can draw reader’s attention to the key aspects of the article and visualize the topic of the post. Buttons can be used to motivate users to some particular actions; and templates are supposed to help designers to create user-friendly interface elements right away. And whatever aim you’d like to achieve, free visual design elements are always useful – simply because they can give your text content a better visual appearance.

We’ve selected fresh high quality icons, buttons, vector graphics, templates and layouts. You might know some of them, but hopefully not all of them.

Not all listed freebies can be used for commercial projects, however you can use all of them in your private projects of for you personal purposes. Please read the disclaimers carefully before using icons – they’re changing from time to time.

You can also scan through the icons-related articles we’ve published before:

• Symbols, Buttons and Icons For Free
• More Symbols, Buttons and Icons

General Icon Sets

1. Notes Icons

2. iMac Icons from FreeIconsWeb.com

3. Pixel Press Icons (.dmg, Mac only)

4. Vista Icons (for private purposes only, 2000 icons, 256×256, .png).

5. Desktop Icons (for private purposes only, icon sets are available for PC and Mac).

6. Browsing Dock Icons

7. Iconfactory Freeware Icon Sets

8. WebSiteIcons.net

9. Toolbar Icons by Matt Ball

10. Crystal Clear

11. Office Icons

12. Shopping Cart Icon

13. Deziner Folio (32 Aqua-icons, transparent, 128×128, .png). Can be used for both commercial and private projects. You can also request .psd-files via e-mail.

Icon Sets for Design Artists

14. Vector Graphics templates, available for free download. Punk Collection, Urban Collection, Resources Collection I und Resources Collection II. Formats are .ai and .eps.

14. Bittbox offers vector graphics for professional design: e.g. 35 Free Abstract Illustrator Brushes.

15. 25 Free Vector Drips, Drops, and Splatters. Besides: Free Vector Grunge Set. Both are available in Adobe Illustrator format or as .eps-files.

Icon Sets for Bloggers

16. Icon-Set for Bloggers by Sonia Anepeta.

17. Web 2.0 Icons by Utombox.

18. 77 Vectorbuttons by Go Squared. For Adobe Illustrator only. Besides: 165 Vector Icons and even more icons for private and commercial use.

19. Web 2.0 Date Icons For Your Blog. Layouts for Adobe Photoshop (.psd) ans as .png-files.

A mini-tutorial on how to use icons is also available. The result might look like this:

20. 9 Web 2.0 Badges. Available as .png or .psd.

If you are looking for even more elegant templates, you might be willing to take a look at Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) package. You’ll need Adobe Illustrator
or Inkscape (Open-Source) to edit the images. What you’ll get out of it, might look like this:

21. Bitbox offers free glossy design layouts, which can be used in Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. Among them: Vector Badges, Glass Buttons and Bars, Web Page Elements, Header Designs and RSS-Icons.

Bittbox also gives away various Adobe Illustrator-templates for modern web design. Among them Buttons, Badges, RSS-Icons, Ecken and numerous Icons.

22. Microformats Icon

23. Microformats Icons

Not Enough? Even More Icons!

• Giøn is an icon set designed by Silvestre Herrea (Argentina). The icon set (1.3 Mb) includes icons in 16*16px, 22*22px and 24*24px, in .png and as open source. The collection isn’t complete yet.
• Mouserunner Icon Set (12 icons). Rounded icons in various sizes in .png and .ico-formats.
  
• Free Tiny Small Mini Icons Bullets: the icons are indeed as tiny as they can possibly be. For different purposes, and free for commercial use.
• Tango Icon Gallery: hundreds of icons in different sizes.

References to Icon Collections

• Iconfactory Freeware Icon Sets (literally hundreds of freeware icon sets)
• Wikipedia: Icons – a regularly updated list of references to various icon collections.
• FreeIconsWeb (dozens of free icon sets)
• Iconbuffet delivers free icon sets on a regular basis. Registration is required.
• IconFinder is an icon search engine. Currently offline.
• Free! Icons for your website or application (31 icon sets)
• 22 Free 16×16 Icon Sets