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Favicons Episode 5: The Delicate Beauties

By Smashing Editorial, January 1st, 2008 in Graphics | 54 Comments | Forum

The New Year’s Eve is a tricky time for designers. Some of us eagerly analyze deadlines, define milestones and refine the time schedule for the upcoming year. The other ones discover the need to update footers and copyright statements on their web-sites (by the way, have you actually replaced “2007″ with “2008″ in your footer?). Still, even on the January 1^st passionate designers continue to strive for inspiration in order to come up with fresh ideas for the ongoing projects.

If the latter is your case, is there really a better way to find the inspiration rather than in a fine gallery of excellent favicons - our not that secret and very lively passion? We’ve written a lot about favicons in the previous articles. If you’d like to find more inspiration or find out more about how they are actually created, take a closer look at the following articles and showcases:

Below you’ll find more examples of an excellent favicon design; we’ve collected these delicate beauties over the last three months.

Please notice that the favicons weren’t chosen simply because of their beauty; it’s been important to us that the favicon perfectly fits to the overall site design. All favicons are linked to the sites where they are used — you can click on them to get more insights into how favicon design can be related to the layout design.

50 Excellent Favicon Designs

This time our favourite favicon is the one used on a Russian web-site called Coalla. It’s a logo (a cute koala ~~coala~~ bear) cut in two halfs. Though it’s simple and uses only black and white, it looks surprising and funny, and is both appealing and memorable. In this case the idea matters more than the design itself.

And here are 49 more excellent Favicons:

Published in Graphics, January 1st, 2008
Tags: favicons, inspiration, showcases

1.

johno (January 1st, 2008, 1:23 pm)

SM’s is pretty good too. I must change mine.
Congratulations on your success in 2007. Hoping that 2008 will be an even better year for you. SM is the best!
2.

Polo (January 1st, 2008, 1:36 pm)

Thanks a lot for the link, happy new year :)
3.

Mark (January 1st, 2008, 4:41 pm)

I think the correct spelling is “Koala” Bear :)

Great list, thanks SM.
4.

Kurt (January 1st, 2008, 5:16 pm)

Thanks for the link!
5.

Chris Vincent (January 1st, 2008, 6:10 pm)

Wow, what a great selection… AGAIN
6.

chris (January 1st, 2008, 6:23 pm)

@mark: nope, click and follow the link, thats how they spell it.
7.

Kathy (January 1st, 2008, 6:38 pm)

I’ve been using this online favicon creator. It shows the result as you work on it, and you can save, publish and share.
Link [www.favicon.cc]
8.

cemiotika (January 1st, 2008, 7:10 pm)

Happy new YEAR! smashing 2007, coming to smash 2008!,

Cheerz!,
9.

Daniel (January 1st, 2008, 7:31 pm)

I love favicons but these small icons don’t get the attention they deserve. Why don’t you install the favatars plugin so comments with websites shows them ?
10.

Asher (January 1st, 2008, 8:48 pm)

Koala is spelt with a k not a c. Calling it a Koala bear is incorrect as it is not a bear, in fact it is more closely related to the kangaroo.
11.

Edi (January 1st, 2008, 10:25 pm)

great Fav’s

i would like to add that

has a great Fav icon
12.

meandyou (January 1st, 2008, 11:05 pm)

Nicely chosen favicons! Vote for Your favourites or ad new ones at the favicon directory - faviconize.com
13.

Nytryk (January 2nd, 2008, 1:23 am)

Carousel is another interesting approach for showcasing images. The script reads the data from a HTML- or XML-file and displays the images in a circle. Similar to iPhone, visitors can browse through the gallery sliding the mouse along the screen; alternatively also the keyboard can be used…
From - Link [www.smashingmagazine.com]
But now it was changed a 404 page :-(
Dear Friends,
I want this gallery. If you have that files please send me via gmail attachment to Link []
14.

Haobam (January 2nd, 2008, 1:47 am)

I wonder when will technology allow us to put GIF icons… :)
15.

Hrvoje (January 2nd, 2008, 2:55 am)

Very interesting favicon layouts. Maybe some animated in the loop soon?

Reminds me I need to make one for myself again :-).

Take care and have more of this.

Hrvoje Livnjak
16.

bizri (January 2nd, 2008, 3:15 am)

wow .. :) very inspiring, thanks SM!
17.

andy (January 2nd, 2008, 3:44 am)

Great selection, cheers. I did one a while back of a tree I was quite pleased with if you fancy a look here : Link [www.communitylandtrust.org.uk]
18.

Steve Ranford (January 2nd, 2008, 4:24 am)

Very nice list again… good inspiration.

I quite like mine (shameless plug, I admit). First one I’ve ever done…
19.

kerunt (January 2nd, 2008, 9:04 am)

Great collection!

However, the link for the hubpages.com is “semi-broken” - doesn’t point to the home page, but to a 404, instead. (You can still see the avatar.)

A bit too much CTRL-V I think ;)
20.

Jeff Adams (January 2nd, 2008, 1:07 pm)

I love this article, the colours on the favicons are useful too well done!!!
21.

Rob Y (January 2nd, 2008, 2:55 pm)

nice favicon Andy but ditch th etable layout :)
22.

pingoogle (January 2nd, 2008, 8:18 pm)

Wow!!!!! cool favs!!! Inspiring. Thanks SM.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
23.

Jez (January 3rd, 2008, 6:47 am)

I think the correct spelling is “Koala” Bear :)

It’s actually wrong to use the word ‘bear’ too.
24.

Lucian Marin (January 3rd, 2008, 9:46 am)

Mine is better :P
25.

hakan (January 3rd, 2008, 2:14 pm)

Great post. Thanks for that!!!
26.

Jauhari (January 4th, 2008, 1:28 am)

Small is Beautiful ;)
27.

dharma (January 4th, 2008, 6:16 am)

The dharma site does have a small beautiful favicon…
28.

Dieter (January 10th, 2008, 6:36 am)

Wow, thanks guys for mentioning my favicon, but I just changed it… my I should bring back the old one?
29.

cat (January 10th, 2008, 7:12 pm)

I really like your blog!
30.

lily (January 10th, 2008, 7:13 pm)

I really like your blog!
31.

wes (January 10th, 2008, 8:51 pm)

This is a good list. I actually need to review my favicons having seen this list.
32.

Eniac (January 13th, 2008, 6:34 am)

Hope you ll like my new favicon

Check it out on

Link [www.furka.com]
33.

Dezign robtoz (February 13th, 2008, 5:31 am)

Excellent collection of Fav Icons..Keep Going..I like tht Hypermax Icon
34.

Forum Lover (March 8th, 2008, 8:33 am)

Cool set of favicons. I am wishing to use favicon too. Any1 can help creating one for me?
35.

Jacky-JQ (June 12th, 2009, 7:57 pm)

Favicon Link [www.tokonita.com] look like Link [www.dafont.com] - logo_skate_2.ttf - h 0104

Link [www.pinyi.web.id] The favicon is real font !