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Favicon Episode 6: Black, Abstract and Hand-Drawing
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:
- Episode 1: Inspire Yourself: 50 Remarkable Favicons
- Episode 2: Inspire Yourself: More Creative Favicons
- Episode 3: Creative Favicons: When Small Is Beautiful
- Episode 4: Creative Favicons: Tiny Artwork
- Episode 5: The Delicate Beauties
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.
[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter!]
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.
 | UnLtdWorld |
And here are 49 more excellent favicons. Let’s start with the black ones.
 | History of Aviation |
 | Picky Surfer |
 | Grafikcache |
 | Agencia Publicidad Marketing |
 | Francesco Brancato |
 | Denk-Licht, this favicon stands for the site layout |
 | Elfnullfünf |
 | Connectio Cube |
 | Coolmix |
 | Iceberg |
 | Fabio Riglietti |
 | Envero |
 | ZAB Design |
 | Grow Studio |
 | Aenonfire |
 | Sideshow |
 | Flash |
 | Dirty.ru |
 | Jobster |
 | Sean Kenney |
 | gd labs |
 | imlousekStudio |
 | Unstoppable Robot Ninja |
 | Pixels with Pigtails |
 | Hire a Designer |
 | Labgfx |
 | Lightfin |
 | Hype! |
 | Limelight Networks |
 | Loudmouf Records |
 | 365° |
Favicons in Hand-Drawing Style
 | Smoothieland |
 | Brand New |
 | Grow Veg, apparently this favicon is a tomato. |
 | Suck UK, an online-shop |
 | Ogilvy Durham |
 | x-Grafik, design from Slovakia |
 | Sky View Parc, a real estate company |
 | Makao |
The Co-Founder of Smashing Magazine. Former writer, web designer, freelancer and webworker. Author of several books. Runs the business.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...- 48 Comments
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March 21st, 2008 3:19 amLove “Hire a Designer ” and “Agencia Publicidad Marketing” (very funny haha)
- 3March 21st, 2008 3:32 am
IMHO it is all about quality of logotypes
- 4March 21st, 2008 3:39 am
Keep up the good work! I’m a fan!
- 5March 21st, 2008 3:59 am
I love these, thanks :]
- 6March 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?
- 7March 21st, 2008 6:14 am
nice colection. thanks.
- 8March 21st, 2008 6:48 am
nice favicon
- 9March 21st, 2008 7:53 am
Grow studio is just using a custom shape that comes with photoshop…
- 10March 21st, 2008 11:48 am
i personally love the hand drawn ones …
- 11March 22nd, 2008 1:23 am
super iconsss
- 12March 22nd, 2008 9:00 am
thanx a lot!
- 13March 22nd, 2008 11:16 am
Very nice indeed. Thanks for the list.
- 14March 22nd, 2008 12:37 pm
I like the handcrafted icons. Simple and beautiful. Thanks!
- 15March 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”.
- 16March 22nd, 2008 5:54 pm
nice icons…
i come across this site… everonsoft.com these icon is nice and delicate too
- 17March 23rd, 2008 10:07 am
Those favicons are great for inspiration! Thanks a lot!
- 18March 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.
- 19March 23rd, 2008 4:04 pm
These are great , thanks for sharing !
- 20March 23rd, 2008 10:02 pm
wow, pixel perfection. Very nice… I am a fan!
- 21March 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…
- 22March 24th, 2008 6:55 am
Thanks, Really Great!
- 23March 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!
- 24March 24th, 2008 4:23 pm
It might be small, but Favicon also plays an important roles in buidling the site’s character.
Great post! - 25March 25th, 2008 1:56 am
Wow!!!
Thanks - 26March 25th, 2008 8:17 am
these are really beautiful icons!
to be picky, i only see 40 here….
- 27March 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°. :)
- 28March 25th, 2008 5:57 pm
Nice, i am on the right way with my little favicon. :-)
- 29March 26th, 2008 1:14 pm
The Grow Studios one is just a default Photoshop shape :(
- 30April 1st, 2008 3:58 pm
Thanks for the nod to Ogilvy Durham! Love the compliments.
- 31May 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!
- 32September 23rd, 2008 2:59 am
Small icons for the site is cool, thank you!
- 00
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“Gro
vVeg, apparently this favicon is a tomato.” ….should be “Grow Veg…” quick, fun little list – thanks!