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Icons For Your Desktop and Icons For Your Web Designs

By Smashing Editorial, November 29th, 2007 in Graphics | 191 Comments | Forum

The value of icons lies in their ability to communicate with visitors or users in a more intuitive and effective way. Jakob Nielsen, the maestro of usability, postulated few years ago that “recognition rather than recall” is one of the basic heuristics for user-friendly design. In fact, it’s necessary to “minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.”

Icons are supposed to achieve just that. And this is why it’s useful to actually use them both on your desktop and in your web design. They can reduce the complexity of the design and make it easier to get from point A to point B.

In the overview below we present some of the fresh high-quality free icons which you can use for your desktop; we also showcase free professional icon sets, buttons and vector graphics you can use for your web designs. 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 the icons - they’re changing from time to time.

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

Icons for Your Desktop and Design

Air Mail Icons
A replacement icon for Apple Mail or any other Mail application. An old school Air Mail Envelope for that ‘old worldish’ quality that seems to have been forgotten in our inbox filled, electronicly busy everyday lives. 32×32px - 512×512 px icon for Mac and PC.

Camera Icon
Replacement icon for Iphoto, Aperture or any other photo application. 2 icons included: a colorful lens for the frivolous and a sligthly more down to earth version. Mac & PC icons + PNG’s bundled.

Icons

File Icons
Includes a total of 100 PNGs and 100 Icons.

iZ3 Icons
The package contains 20 different icons for Windows XP & Vista, 7 different colors, 256×256 Pixel PNG previews, 256×256 ico formats for XP & Vista.

iLeopard Icons Pack
Special edition of iLeopard Icons Pack series. All Leopard icons available in 512*512 pixels with 96 dpi.

Icons

White Leopard Icons, Black Leopard Icons
This icon set for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) contains 19 folder icons in both .icns- and .png-format (128×128 and 512×512px). Every folder icon (such as applications, music, movies etc.) will be replaced by adding these icons to your system.

Vista Style Ultimate IconPackager
Includes new gray folders, updated Vista Sounds, and also new file icons. 19.7 Mb.

Safari Icon
This is a Pith Helmet for a real Safari user! Leopard ready, Jungle ready!

BlackAqua Safari Icon
Icns, png and ico - max 256×256px.

Camino Icons
A few icons for the Mac OSX super browser Camino, 5 colors and a retro look for your favorite browser.

Hardwaremx
7 icons in various sizes. For Mac and Windows.

Square Compass
128px, 256px and 512px in .png.

iTweek’s icon sets
A small selection of nice icon sets, among them the Skype icon, Ipod Nano and the Graphic Converter.

Apple Various Pack
A number of Apple icons bundled in a one single package.

Icons

Web Design Icons

Email Me Icons
This icon set contains 11 icons in sizes 32×32 px, 48×48px, 128×128px, in .png format.

Jonas Rask’s Icons
Over 20 outstanding free icon sets for Win and Mac.

Icons

Rounder Icons
43 rounded 128×128 .png-icons.

Aesthetica Icon Set
“Aesthetica” Icon Set was created to lend visual excitement to your projects. This set is fresh, stylish and modern, all mixed up in the perfect proportions. This set contains the following icons in 32-bit transparency PNG and Photoshop’s PSD.

Orb Icon Set
Inspirational icons.

WYSIWYG Sapphire Icons
This icon set, as the name indicates, can find its use wherever you might need WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing or similar actions in your applications. The WYSIWYG Sapphire Icon Set is a part of the DryIcons’ WYSIWYG sequence icon sets, the name is inspired by its specific tone colors giving it an unique ’sapphire’ look.

Iconbase’s selection
A growing selection of high quality icons for Windows and/or Mac.

Project Folders pack
Project Folders Icons Pack set includes 4 PNG icons for Windows (XP and Vista).

Free RSS Feed Icons
We’ve covered dozens of RSS-Icons sets recently, however there are some sets we’ve missed. This one comes in 6 colors

More social icons
12 icons. PNG. Spanish.

Icons

51 RSS Button For Your Blog
Even more RSS-buttons & icons.

Icons

Social Bookmarks Iconset 2
This set includes icons for Furl, Windows live, Blinklist, Blogger, Lifelogger etc. All icons are sized to 64*64 in PNG format and it’s great to use them on your website or blog.

Social Web Buttons - Set 1
20 Buttons released under a Creative Commons License

Ganato Free Icons
Free PSD Icons (24 icon sets), among them a home set, plugin set, monitor set, application set, chart set and many more.

Web 2.0 Vector Icons-1 and Web 2.0 Vector Icons-2
Vector icons in one single .EPS-file. Very unfriendly download via rapidshare or depositfiles. these services are annoying.

Free Icons for Web & Application Interface Systems
140 PNG all free Icons. Icons come in 4 sizes. Here is a preview. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

20 Free Sunny Buttons
There is also a .PSD source.

Plastic Baggies Icons

Blog-Micro-Buttons
80×15 pixels in 2 styles.

Pixelicious
150 icons mainly intended for developers. 32×32 pixel. Free for personal use or non profit organisations.

Social Button

Overall 400 mini icons (10×10 and 16×16) are available in the set of Set von Dapino. The icons can be used royalty-free by Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license for any personal or commercial projects. PNG format.

Firefox Icons Packs
A collection of icons related to various Firefox-project. In most cases the quality is much better than you might think at the first glance. Experimental designs are also available.

Ben has some free vector musical instruments.

The same theme from Spoon Graphics: Live Music.

Some clouds. Look out for more stuff.

40 Vector Icons for Apple Products
So here is something to keep you ticking over: a sample of vector icons of all your favourite (or perhaps most hated) Apple products, from iPods and iPhone to iMacs and the Apple Remote.

Dancing Girls
Vector silhouettes of dancing ladies (*.eps).

Random Free Vectors - Part 13: Stars
EPS or SVG from Bittbox.

Paper Doc Icons
11 paper doc .icon & transparent .png 128 x 128 px

Leopard Dock Designs
Download your Apple Leopard dock design. There are 110+ design at this time on one singel page.

Dockulicious
Tired of the regular Mac OS 10.5 Leopard dock?

References

You can find even more free icons in the

IconShock.com Freebies
A free icons forum where users share their findings and works.

Published in Graphics, November 29th, 2007
Tags: buttons, downloads, icons, royalty-free, rss, symbols

1.

V1 (November 29th, 2007, 9:34 pm)

Looking hot ^_^
2.

Evandro Guedes (November 29th, 2007, 9:47 pm)

Great resource!!
3.

Anthony (November 29th, 2007, 10:19 pm)

I loves me some icons!
4.

Eds (November 29th, 2007, 10:43 pm)

Nice! Thanks!
5.

Ian N (November 29th, 2007, 10:48 pm)

God, I love Smashing Mag. :)
6.

Kyle Johnson (November 29th, 2007, 10:54 pm)

Wow, really nice collection!
7.

Juan Manuel Lemus (November 29th, 2007, 11:00 pm)

Very cool collection. But, don’t forget everaldo :)
8.

Nytryk (November 29th, 2007, 11:01 pm)

WoW :-O Another Smash :-)
9.

Sven Kaiser (November 29th, 2007, 11:13 pm)

Beautiful list - thanks alot :-)
10.

Zhonk (November 29th, 2007, 11:17 pm)

very cool collection, well done sm :)
11.

Charlie Park (November 30th, 2007, 12:02 am)

The value of icons lies in their ability to communicate with visitors or users in a more intuitive and effective way. Jakob Nielsen, the maestro of usability, postulated few years ago that “recognition rather than recall” is one of the basic heuristics for user-friendly design. In fact, it’s necessary to “minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.”

Icons are supposed to achieve just that. And this is why it’s useful to actually use them both on your desktop and in your web design. They can reduce the complexity of the design and make it easier to get from point A to point B.

The icons you’ve listed are certainly pretty, but if your goal is usability, they’re not necessarily the best way to go.

Jef Raskin noted: Icons contribute to [the] visual attractiveness of an interface and, under the appropriate circumstances, can contribute to clarity; however, the failings of icons have become clearer with time. … Instead of icons explaining, we have found that icons often require explanation. If you wanted to obscure or to encode an idea to keep it from prying eyes, substituting icons for the words might not be a bad start.”

He continues: “In every study that considered the question, icons were demonstrated to be more difficult to understand than were labels, especially at first viewing, which contradicts one of the most frequently cited reasons for using icons, namely, comprehensibility for beginners.”

I’m not saying the pictures that you show in this post aren’t pretty. They’re gorgeous. But it does a disservice to both designers and to users to promote icons as a means of “minimizing the user’s memory load.” In fact, icons only serve to increase it.
12.

manish (November 30th, 2007, 12:42 am)

ur blog is excellent …. each and every blog is very informative.. a must read for developers.
13.

hts (November 30th, 2007, 12:45 am)

Great sets of icons…I’ll use some of them to change the interface of my old WinXP. Thanks!
14.

Michael Flarup (November 30th, 2007, 1:40 am)

Yay, alot of my icon work from pixelresort.com featured in this post. What a great way to start off the weekend early. Should be fun to watch the traffic boost. =)

Thanks for featuring my work again SM!
15.

Design Bliss (November 30th, 2007, 1:52 am)

A note of caution about that “Dancing Girls” set above. That site posts stuff stolen off of iStockphoto and other places.
16.

Danny Outlaw (November 30th, 2007, 2:50 am)

I love icons. They are like little pieces of candy. So much fun!
17.

Fraisouille (November 30th, 2007, 2:59 am)

Hey, looks like you have forgotten famfamfam icons …
Link [www.famfamfam.com]

Great pack of free web icons !!
18.

Adam Bard (November 30th, 2007, 3:13 am)

Regarding Charlie Park above, I think it could be said that icons can make matters easier for the user. Specifically, standard icons — such as the RSS icon in its various incarnations — impart meaningful information to those users familiar with them, without cluttering the page with superfluous information. If I go to a page such as this one, and decide I want the feed, I look for that icon.

Arbitrary icons ought to be treated as eye candy, but standardized ones can improve the user experience.
19.

Robert (November 30th, 2007, 3:54 am)

Most of them are not for commercial use - sadly. On my Link [kernbereich.com] I posted a list of 33+ resources of icons free for commercial use - perhaps you find it useful. Apart of that the work you presented is very “eyecandy”. Thank you for the inspiring list.
20.

Thomas (November 30th, 2007, 4:39 am)

Found Link [twinware.deviantart.com] recently on DeviantArt and love it in Combination with mozillas Prism application to use as my Icon for the google Reader… Check it out.

T.
21.

ptamaro (November 30th, 2007, 4:53 am)

Nice collection! Thanks as always for sharing the love…
22.

Troy (November 30th, 2007, 5:52 am)

Where’s the silk icon set? Those are by far the best!
Link [www.famfamfam.com]
23.

Jelmer (November 30th, 2007, 6:07 am)

Yeah I definitely agree with Troy! The silk icons set is awesome, has lots of icons and is free as well. I’ve seen it on a lot of websites and it should be included in this list!
24.

Pierre (November 30th, 2007, 6:24 am)

Great collection! Thanks
25.

Rene (November 30th, 2007, 6:39 am)

Mind that the rapidshare hosted ‘Web 2.0′ vectors/ icons are not free and the author of the site hosting it is not the owner!
26.

Yo (November 30th, 2007, 8:07 am)

I think this sources are ILLEGAL
Link [dezignus.com]
Link [garcya.us]

Correct me if i’m wrong!
27.

Leo (November 30th, 2007, 11:12 am)

How about some cute Link [www.ndesign-studio.com]?
28.

Thought-Blender (November 30th, 2007, 11:49 am)

Nice. Many Thanks.
29.

KJ (November 30th, 2007, 2:11 pm)

Thoroughly impressive!
30.

Rubin (November 30th, 2007, 2:27 pm)

Yet another great resource for web design. Definetly will become useful.
31.

bmunch (November 30th, 2007, 2:40 pm)

I am always impressed by the quality of a SM list, but I am particularly impressed by the depth and breath of their list. Anytime, they choose a topic for a list, you won’t be able to compete with you list. Its just impossible.
32.

Shrinivas (November 30th, 2007, 2:41 pm)

gr888888 Thanks
33.

Mohsin (November 30th, 2007, 3:07 pm)

..Or simply visit deviantART icons gallery.
34.

Matt Davey (November 30th, 2007, 4:29 pm)

Link [www.leoparddocks.net] we have some docks as well. Loving this post you can never have too many Icons
35.

Andreas (November 30th, 2007, 6:10 pm)

Hmm, isn’t the Angular Iconset a commercial product from Yellow Icon? They sell it for $249:
Link [www.yellowicon.com]
36.

Hubbers (November 30th, 2007, 6:26 pm)

The problem is to get these into your curtrent site with out looking like that were added at the last minute after everything else was designed.
37.

Evangelist (November 30th, 2007, 6:43 pm)

Great list again…
38.

Alessandro (November 30th, 2007, 8:35 pm)

some really gorgeous!
39.

Mr. Kowalsky (December 1st, 2007, 5:41 am)

Another great list, again. This is a must-read for any developer our there!

I felt good about myself when I found two icons sets on this list from dryicons.com because I just used their Aesthetica set on one of my back-end applications. It really is a great icons set and I love how they turned out on my application.

Keep up the good work guys.
40.

Marco Nuñez (December 1st, 2007, 6:28 am)

Goooo.. thisis is excelent…
Very good input
41.

Bobbi (December 1st, 2007, 8:49 am)

Fnx! Nice icons!
42.

Nikko (December 1st, 2007, 2:29 pm)

Very good….Great list and cool …thanks friends ^_^
43.

pankrti (December 1st, 2007, 2:56 pm)

Great list! I wonder how do you find all these great ideas? Especially the “dancing ladies” in vectors…
44.

Mark Fulton (December 2nd, 2007, 1:01 am)

Very cool. I would have to say Link [www.iconbuffet.com] is one of the best resources for free icon sets. Pick and choose a handful of premium quality sets to be delivered to you each month.

Cheers, Link [www.markfulton.com]
45.

Logesh (December 2nd, 2007, 1:59 am)

I liked to have a Black Coloured dark RSS icon. But i got disappointed :(
46.

Colurz (December 2nd, 2007, 5:27 am)

Thank you for this great collection of Icons! Great List!
47.

Nedim Sabic (December 2nd, 2007, 3:06 pm)

Thank you very much, I will use it for redisigning
48.

Pourlagloire (December 3rd, 2007, 12:44 am)

Smashing Mag still on top of them all. Great !
49.

Stanly (December 3rd, 2007, 4:16 am)

Hello my friend. Can you change “Dancing girls” link to new set of photoshop shapes? - Link [dezignus.com]
Because new set include that girls, and much… much more other silhouettes ;)
50.

asterix (December 4th, 2007, 1:52 am)

Angular: 90 Free Icons
51.

aakash (December 4th, 2007, 11:03 am)

some icons (3D) you can find here also!!!

Link [akkasone.deviantart.com]
52.

OverZero.it (December 5th, 2007, 5:40 pm)

GREAT Work guys! Keep it up!
53.

Jean-Marc Fontaine (December 5th, 2007, 6:40 pm)

Set von Dapino : The icons can be used royalty-free by Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license for any personal or commercial projects.

The licence is “Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Netherlands” which means that comemrcial uses are prohibited.
54.

Deepak (December 6th, 2007, 5:03 pm)

Bea-uti-ful…Smash,mash,clash,gmash… What a shot…
55.

Shuklendu (December 7th, 2007, 6:53 pm)

Suuuuuuuuuuperb Collection
56.

Ravi (December 8th, 2007, 8:19 pm)

really useful! some slick icons found here
57.

Christian (December 9th, 2007, 1:57 am)

Link [garcya.us] is not longer valid.
58.

Tino (December 10th, 2007, 7:06 pm)

Once again thanks for sharing these great icons. :-)
59.

Shycon Design (December 11th, 2007, 2:13 am)

Glorious post! Bookmarked for later
60.

Dapo (December 12th, 2007, 2:22 am)

Thanks 4 these awesome icons.
Where can I get tutorials to make icons like these(esp.the mac style - they look so real!)?
61.

Dapo (December 12th, 2007, 2:37 am)

where can I get tutorials to make icons like these - especially those real looking mac ones
62.

David Mackey (December 14th, 2007, 11:36 am)

You guys put out beautiful posts! I’ve added this article’s link
63.

David (December 14th, 2007, 3:40 pm)

nice packs! thanks for this…!
64.

Devin Jang (December 17th, 2007, 3:46 pm)

Coooooooool~~~~~!!!! Thanks!! :)
65.

Valentina Olini (December 18th, 2007, 6:07 am)

Oh my God are wonderful!!!!! thank you smashingmagazine!!
66.

Max (December 18th, 2007, 5:14 pm)

Great Compilation. Regards :)
67.

kade (January 8th, 2008, 2:40 pm)

is there a way to get the above icons in vector format?
68.

mento (January 14th, 2008, 4:48 am)

excellent collection of icons!
missed the mnimal iconset Link [sryo.deviantart.com]
69.

Letsdown (January 20th, 2008, 12:51 pm)

This is a nice collection .Thank you
70.

PiticStyle (January 23rd, 2008, 3:46 am)

The best resource from the internet. Thank you!
71.

Stephen Bird (January 24th, 2008, 7:23 am)

Sweat graphic sets, well pleased.
Link [www.bubbila.com]
72.

Dolapo Taiwo (March 5th, 2008, 3:19 am)

Thanks for the icons. They are really useful. Link [www.unotechmedia.com]
73.

John (March 7th, 2008, 5:42 am)

Awesome resources.

Thank you.
74.

Icons (March 18th, 2008, 5:23 am)

Great icons resources, Can you add my free icons site to your list
Link [www.freeiconsdownload.com]
75.

komik (March 19th, 2008, 7:08 am)

thank you for icon ;)
76.

Shirley Kaiser (March 19th, 2008, 9:28 pm)

Important for Vitaly and Sven:

Your link to: Angular: 90 Free Icons is to a site that is giving away these icons and breaking copyright laws. These beautiful icons are actually a stock icon set created by Yellow Icon Design: Link [yellowicon.com]. Yellow Icon Design sells them as part of their Stock Icons products.

I personally contacted Yellow Icon Design today by email (March 19, 2008) and they quickly confirmed this information. Why did I do all this? Via my websitetips.com site’s Link [websitetips.com] section I’d also unknowingly linked to the pirated icons at the same blog that you’re listing as of this comment. BUT I found a blog post this morning that told of this pirated icons situation: Link [www.webappers.com] So I emailed Yellow Icon Design and they personally confirmed, as I mentioned above. Feel free to contact them yourself, of course, to confirm all this, of course!

I do hope you will either remove that listing or replace the link with the CORRECT link to the rightful creator of these gorgeous icons.
77.

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (March 20th, 2008, 10:21 am)

@Shirley: thank you, we appreciate your efforts. The link was removed.
78.

Prabhakaran.G (March 21st, 2008, 3:54 am)

Download Pixel Icons in 5 Variant Colors for free Link [www.thelfs.com]
If you face any problem in downloading shoot an message in the contact page.
Thanks,
Have a nice day!
Prabhakaran.G
79.

WebFusion (April 21st, 2008, 6:56 pm)

Great collection!UPDATE: the Jonas Rask’s Icons link is no longer available. That’s the new link: Link [www.jonasraskdesign.com]
80.

web tasarım (May 3rd, 2008, 7:24 am)

very nice.thank you. can you add a lot of png icon ? im searching web png icons.where can i find?
81.

Daniel (May 27th, 2008, 12:15 pm)

Awensome, thanx!
82.

Simple Station (June 29th, 2008, 8:28 am)

Thanks for the great web icons guys.
83.

basmanyak (August 18th, 2008, 7:54 am)

very nice icons..
84.

hoca (October 3rd, 2008, 7:58 am)

Thanks for the great web icon links.
Link [www.hoca.com]
85.

web (October 8th, 2008, 5:56 am)

lovely icons for Link [www.spiralteck.com]
86.

fatih (November 11th, 2008, 11:54 pm)

çok teşekkür ederim işime çok yaradı.

I am Turkısh..
87.

Margot Harrison (November 12th, 2008, 12:43 pm)

xnbvgpcu9uri7yam

シンボルフォントを活用しよう
88.

Hendrik (December 20th, 2008, 11:24 am)

Thank you very much for the awesome icons!
89.

Freeblog (January 11th, 2009, 12:21 am)

This is a fine collection of Icons I have been looking alot lately consider this page Book marked
Kind Regards
Bill007

Oh By the way the Web is made so much Better with people Like you
90.

Obama09 (January 19th, 2009, 1:19 am)

nice, very nice!
91.

Paul (February 9th, 2009, 7:21 pm)

想要一套比较全的绿色系的。。
：（
92.

seyed mahdi hoseini (February 11th, 2009, 11:00 pm)

man ke bavaram nemishe .
93.

Anonymous (February 19th, 2009, 4:35 am)

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How’d you find theeeeeeeeesssssssseeeeeee?!?!?!?!?!?? BEAUTIFULLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
94.

Marilou Castillo (March 12th, 2009, 7:22 am)

I was disappointed to see that the iLeopard Icons Pack doesn’t have a link to it…
95.

Imran (March 15th, 2009, 9:44 pm)

Great resource!!
96.

james smith (April 16th, 2009, 12:19 am)

found these the other day , I like carbon stuff
Link [graphicriver.net]
97.

нeвидимкa (May 31st, 2009, 4:19 am)

Удачи вам! Я думаю у вас все получится :)
98.

CO3PEBШИЙ (June 18th, 2009, 2:54 pm)

Приятно понимать, что остались действительно блоги в этой мусорке рейтинга Яши. Ваш - один из таких. Спасибо!