Smashing Magazine ~ we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.
Smashing Magazine we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Favicon Episode 6: Black, Abstract and Hand-Drawing

Advertisement

Every now and again we showcase beautiful favicons — tiny pieces of art you’ll usually find only if you are looking for them or search we stumble through your bookmarks. We’ve written enough about favicons in our recent posts. If you’d like to find out more about them, feel free to take a look at our previous posts:

Below you’ll find 50 more outstanding little pieces of art. Please notice that these favicons weren’t chosen simply because of their beauty; it’s been important to us that the favicon perfectly fits to the site design or its content. All favicons are clickable and lead to the sites where they are used.

50 Outstanding Favicons

Compared to its colleagues, UnLtdWorld’s favicon deserves particular attention. What you see below is a favicon with a 3D-effect; such a result within 32×32px area in .ico is indeed fine art.

Favicon UnLtdWorld

And here are 49 more excellent favicons. Let’s start with the black ones.

Favicon History of Aviation
Favicon Picky Surfer
Favicon Grafikcache
Favicon Agencia Publicidad Marketing
Favicon Francesco Brancato
Favicon Denk-Licht, this favicon stands for the site layout
Favicon Elfnullfünf
Favicon Connectio Cube
Favicon Coolmix
Favicon Iceberg
Favicon Fabio Riglietti
Favicon Envero
Favicon ZAB Design
Favicon Grow Studio
Favicon Aenonfire
Favicon Sideshow
Favicon Flash
Favicon Dirty.ru
Favicon Jobster
Favicon Sean Kenney
Favicon gd labs
Favicon imlousekStudio
Favicon Unstoppable Robot Ninja
Favicon Pixels with Pigtails
Favicon Hire a Designer
Favicon Labgfx
Favicon Lightfin
Favicon Hype!
Favicon Limelight Networks
Favicon Loudmouf Records
Favicon 365°

Favicons in Hand-Drawing Style

Favicon Smoothieland
Favicon Brand New
Favicon Grow Veg, apparently this favicon is a tomato.
Favicon Suck UK, an online-shop
Favicon Ogilvy Durham
Favicon x-Grafik, design from Slovakia
Favicon Sky View Parc, a real estate company
Favicon Makao
Advertisement
  1. 1.

    Brian (March 21st, 2008, 2:59 am)

    “Grov Veg, apparently this favicon is a tomato.” ….should be “Grow Veg…” quick, fun little list - thanks!

  2. 2.

    Skeku (March 21st, 2008, 3:19 am)

    Love “Hire a Designer ” and “Agencia Publicidad Marketing” (very funny haha)

  3. 3.

    Bumbo (March 21st, 2008, 3:32 am)

    IMHO it is all about quality of logotypes

  4. 4.

    jussi (March 21st, 2008, 3:39 am)

    Keep up the good work! I’m a fan!

  5. 5.

    William (March 21st, 2008, 3:44 am)

    Cool, i think it adds a lot to a website. (its all in the details!)
    Came across this cool one: Link [www.supersteil.nl] :D

    nice!

  6. 6.

    Shaun (March 21st, 2008, 3:59 am)

    I love these, thanks :]

  7. 7.

    Brandi (March 21st, 2008, 4:36 am)

    Whoa! Thanks for featuring my favicon on your list (pixels with pigtails)! This is truly one of my favorite design blogs, so it’s quite an honor ;-) I’m a big fan of cropping and negative space, so that played into my design decisions for a new favicon heavily. It amazes me how many people never even notice these icons…where do they think the picture next to their bookmarked items comes from?

  8. 8.

    ahnShev (March 21st, 2008, 6:14 am)

    nice colection. thanks.

  9. 9.

    damek (March 21st, 2008, 6:48 am)

    nice favicon

  10. 10.

    Josh Wynn (March 21st, 2008, 6:48 am)

    Great collection. I like the Flash one the best. I also like one that is not on your list: Link [www.impresslab.com] (Impress Lab). I like their small little potion bottle!

  11. 11.

    Ryan (March 21st, 2008, 7:53 am)

    Grow studio is just using a custom shape that comes with photoshop…

  12. 12.

    SEO Love (March 21st, 2008, 10:51 am)

    I like the x-Grafik, design from Slovakia.
    The black icons are not that great though.

  13. 13.

    steven (March 21st, 2008, 11:48 am)

    i personally love the hand drawn ones …

  14. 14.

    Sylvain (March 21st, 2008, 12:04 pm)

    Look this handed drawn (cropped from the logo) : Link [www.larondedesfromages.com]

  15. 15.

    imaginepaolo (March 21st, 2008, 11:06 pm)

    Wath about my favicon?Link [www.imaginepaolo.com]

  16. 16.

    z.Yleo77 (March 21st, 2008, 11:36 pm)

    很漂亮》!·

  17. 17.

    pusulaweb (March 22nd, 2008, 1:23 am)

    super iconsss

  18. 18.

    zoltan (March 22nd, 2008, 9:00 am)

    thanx a lot!

  19. 19.

    Shane (March 22nd, 2008, 11:16 am)

    Very nice indeed. Thanks for the list.

  20. 20.

    Nastya Manno (March 22nd, 2008, 12:37 pm)

    I like the handcrafted icons. Simple and beautiful. Thanks!

  21. 21.

    New to site (March 22nd, 2008, 3:48 pm)

    Why would you feature grow studio’s favicon? It’s a default shape in Photoshop that they skewed vertically. It doesn’t look like it took any thought and probably about 10 seconds to “design”.

  22. 22.

    Bingo (March 22nd, 2008, 5:54 pm)

    nice icons…

    i come across this site… everonsoft.com these icon is nice and delicate too

  23. 23.

    Mike (March 23rd, 2008, 10:07 am)

    Those favicons are great for inspiration! Thanks a lot!

  24. 24.

    Timmay (March 23rd, 2008, 11:13 am)

    Check out my very sexy favicon: Link [timothysykes.com]

  25. 25.

    D Champ (March 23rd, 2008, 1:58 pm)

    There is always room for 50 more beautiful favicons! Unlimited World indeed deserves to be exposed. As I can see in past year or so, more and more smaller sites are taking time to custom made their favicons. It looks like favicon industry is moving into micro-art direction.

  26. 26.

    Evo08 (March 23rd, 2008, 4:04 pm)

    These are great , thanks for sharing !

  27. 27.

    dharma (March 23rd, 2008, 10:02 pm)

    wow, pixel perfection. Very nice… I am a fan!

  28. 28.

    ptamaro (March 24th, 2008, 4:38 am)

    Favicons can be tough to do, but always well worth the effort because they add a lot of “polish” to your design. These are great, thanks…

  29. 29.

    a (March 24th, 2008, 6:55 am)

    Thanks, Really Great!

  30. 30.

    Fashionistatv (March 24th, 2008, 11:03 am)

    Before I start any project I come to SM. I use at least one tool in your sidebar daily….thanks for this inspirational favicon post, looking forward to another round of CSS postings!

  31. 31.

    CMSTheme (March 24th, 2008, 4:23 pm)

    It might be small, but Favicon also plays an important roles in buidling the site’s character.
    Great post!

  32. 32.

    pingoogle (March 25th, 2008, 1:56 am)

    Wow!!!
    Thanks

  33. 33.

    Dave Lane (March 25th, 2008, 8:17 am)

    these are really beautiful icons!

    to be picky, i only see 40 here….

  34. 34.

    Robert Bardou (March 25th, 2008, 9:04 am)

    365° - is there a mistake in list of 50 Outstanding Favicons, the last one. It can’t be 365°. There are only 360°. :)

  35. 35.

    Fokus (March 25th, 2008, 12:41 pm)

    let me show u mine fav - based on my logo [www.fokuspace.com]

  36. 36.

    Eureka (March 25th, 2008, 5:57 pm)

    Nice, i am on the right way with my little favicon. :-)

  37. 37.

    Kyle (March 26th, 2008, 1:14 pm)

    The Grow Studios one is just a default Photoshop shape :(

  38. 38.

    Callie (April 1st, 2008, 3:58 pm)

    Thanks for the nod to Ogilvy Durham! Love the compliments.

  39. 39.

    Mikel (May 1st, 2008, 12:45 pm)

    Can anyone provide me with a link to a tutorial that shows how to add these icons to your url. I am using Dreamweaver 8.

    Thanks!

Leave a Reply

Allowed Tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
 

All Posts

Sideblog

Footers can be a place where a designer can let his creative juices flow a little more freely. Christian Watson shows 76 excellent footer designs. More footers.

Footers

Ross Johnson discusses 8 forgotten fonts you may use in CSS. Among them are Palatino Linotype, Century Gothic, Copperplate and Gill Sans — apparently, these fonts are installed on a variety of operating systems.

Palatino

How creative can a table of contents be? Designobserver presents Thirty Tables of Contents. The collection includes excerpts from the books by Philip Larkin, Philip Roth, Paul Rand and Jan Tschichold.

Table of Contents

A set of 18 splendid and colorful looking 3D RSS-Icons. They are done with 3d Studio Max. JPG.

Screenshot

In Font Clock 12 different fonts are printed within the mechanism of a clock, providing a random, mixed display of graphic language within a single time piece. Designed by Sebastian Wrong.

Font Clock

One pixel notched corners as used by Google Analytics. Instead of each option being boxed in a clickable rectangle, there is a 1px notch in each corner. It's not necessarily a curved corner, but it is a little softer than a normal box. Nice little trick.

Screenshot

Hartija is a CSS print framework which is an attempt to unite best CSS printing practices into one single CSS-file.

Rather than standard website templates, a free admin template is nearly impossible to find. This is an admin template which you can use for web applications like online-shops or CMS.

Screenshot

  • Grab the High-Quality OpenType Free Font Anivers!
  • Grab the Dilectio WordPress Theme!
  • Grab the Smashing WordPress Theme!