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Favicon Episode 6: Black, Abstract and Hand-Drawing

By Smashing Editorial, March 21st, 2008 in Graphics | 57 Comments | Forum

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.

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

Published in Graphics, March 21st, 2008
Tags: favicons, inspiration, showcases

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.

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

Love “Hire a Designer ” and “Agencia Publicidad Marketing” (very funny haha)
3.

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

IMHO it is all about quality of logotypes
4.

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

Keep up the good work! I’m a fan!
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.

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

I love these, thanks :]
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.

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

nice colection. thanks.
9.

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

nice favicon
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.

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

Grow studio is just using a custom shape that comes with photoshop…
12.

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

i personally love the hand drawn ones …
13.

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

Look this handed drawn (cropped from the logo) : Link [www.larondedesfromages.com]
14.

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

Wath about my favicon?Link [www.imaginepaolo.com]
15.

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

很漂亮》！·
16.

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

super iconsss
17.

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

thanx a lot!
18.

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

Very nice indeed. Thanks for the list.
19.

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

I like the handcrafted icons. Simple and beautiful. Thanks!
20.

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”.
21.

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

nice icons…

i come across this site… everonsoft.com these icon is nice and delicate too
22.

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

Those favicons are great for inspiration! Thanks a lot!
23.

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

Check out my very sexy favicon: Link [timothysykes.com]
24.

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.
25.

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

These are great , thanks for sharing !
26.

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

wow, pixel perfection. Very nice… I am a fan!
27.

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…
28.

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

Thanks, Really Great!
29.

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!
30.

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!
31.

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

Wow!!!
Thanks
32.

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

these are really beautiful icons!

to be picky, i only see 40 here….
33.

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°. :)
34.

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

let me show u mine fav - based on my logo [www.fokuspace.com]
35.

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

Nice, i am on the right way with my little favicon. :-)
36.

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

The Grow Studios one is just a default Photoshop shape :(
37.

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

Thanks for the nod to Ogilvy Durham! Love the compliments.
38.

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!
39.

masterza (September 23rd, 2008, 2:59 am)

Small icons for the site is cool, thank you!
40.

Berni (November 22nd, 2008, 10:44 am)

Nice Tipp: Link [www.agenturfuchs.at]

Great Icons!!
41.

Webshopnews (December 29th, 2008, 5:37 am)

Really nice list, giving me some ideas for a new favicon. Thanks a lot!

Link [www.webshopnews.net]