Favicons, Episode 8

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Every now and again we showcase beautiful favicons, tiny pieces of art you’ll find in your browser’s address bar or when searching through your bookmarks. Favicons are important because they provide visual indicators to visitors and help them easily associate content with a bookmark in their browser. Besides that, favicons are just nice to look at, and there are way too many websites that don’t make use of them. We want to change that, which is why we are presenting the 8th episode of our favicons series — for a change, a small article with very small images and a quick loading time.

We’ve written enough about favicons in the past. If you’d like to find out more about them, feel free to look at our previous posts:

Notice that these favicons were chosen not simply for their beauty; it’s been important to us that the favicon fits perfectly with the overall website design. Pay close attention to the small details of the design. All favicons are linked, of course, to the websites where they are used (if they still exist) — click on them to get more insight into how favicon design relates to overall layout design. The favicons are listed in no particular order.

Favicon Notifu
Favicon Celsius Compile
Favicon Derek Allard
Favicon Typo3 Switch
Favicon Tajloro
Favicon Nicole Bauer
Favicon Computersight
Favicon Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Hong Kong
Favicon Sodevious
Favicon Inspired Buddy
Favicon Digital Camera Resource Page
Favicon Accessites
Favicon Creative News
Favicon Bed and Breakfast Brescia
Favicon Web Urbanist
Favicon LoupDeLou
Favicon Vida Comunicação
Favicon Clay Ant
Favicon Patrick Monkel’s Karma
Favicon Designspotter
Favicon Train 1 on 1
Favicon Turism Point Romania
Favicon Heartprints
Favicon The Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans
Favicon Burrow Physiotherapy Pontefract
Favicon Dean J. Robinson
Favicon Salt Solutions
Favicon Lyte Byte
Favicon Foxycart
Favicon Notified
Favicon Evoluted
Favicon Lifesize
Favicon Iconified
Favicon Kidsmodern
Favicon Knoxville Tourism
Favicon Etnies
Favicon Max Voltar
Favicon we:presenter
Favicon Scrumy
Favicon Stefano Verna. (Yes, a simple idea, but very effective in a bookmark list.)
Favicon Web Magazine
Favicon My Bank Tracker
Favicon Get a Freelancer. (Reminds me of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.)
Favicon Scinexx
Favicon Diplod
Favicon Strands
Favicon Custom Canvas
Favicon I like to Design. (Last but not least, a very animated one.)

Co-Founder of Smashing Magazine. Former writer, web designer, freelancer and webworker. Author of several books.

  1. 1

    John

    November 20th, 2008 3:07 pm

    Great post. I love favicons. Im inspired now. My fav is computersight from this list. Nice post thanks.

    0
  2. 2

    zanders

    November 20th, 2008 3:37 pm

    I love Patrick Monkel’s Karma and Evoluted mainly because I’ve always been a fan of natural/leaf designs.
    I also like Tajloro, but feel the enlarged version of the favicon appears too many times on the actual site. Shame.
    Brilliant post yet again! You’re the only magazine that I read every post, instead of skipping 90% of the content, like usual!

    0
  3. 3

    Tammy Hart

    November 20th, 2008 3:58 pm

    When I realized that favicons were sticking out to my mind, it made me realized that I needed one, so in my recent design update, I included one

    0
  4. 4

    wefwef

    November 20th, 2008 4:11 pm

    Some fantastic favicons. Just goes to show how good you can make them.

    0
  5. 5

    Sean

    November 20th, 2008 4:12 pm

    The one listed for CodeIgniter is derekallard… CodeIgniter’s favicon is the little flame.

    +1
  6. 6

    Dan Kordik

    November 20th, 2008 4:17 pm

    Hey, nice to see us up there! Just one thing though- it’s “Scrumy”, not “Scrummy”, damn domain squatters.

    0
  7. 7

    Albert

    November 20th, 2008 4:43 pm

    I think Patrick Monkel’s Karma, Designspotter and Evoluted have done great job to get their Favicons that great

    0
  8. 8

    bim

    November 20th, 2008 4:54 pm

    You forgot to mention smashing magazine favicon.. simple and effective. I think I have a good one too…

    0
  9. 9

    Ricky

    November 20th, 2008 5:30 pm

    The very best, most practical use of favicons that I’ve seen the WC3 orgs validation pages. When you’re validating your markup or CSS, you don’t even need to wait for the page to load, just watch the Favicon. A green Favicon means your markup passed validation, a Red Favicon and you know you’ve got more work to go.

    0
  10. 10

    Rémi

    November 20th, 2008 5:55 pm

    Beautiful set !
    I would like to know, what are your favorites tools to make yours favicons ?
    (to draw, and to generate).
    Thanks

    0
  11. 11

    mikemike

    November 20th, 2008 6:30 pm

    Wow, this post is littered with misspellings.

    0
  12. 12

    Derek Allard

    November 20th, 2008 7:40 pm

    Indeed a fantastic article… thanks! Just FYI, the third icon down (robot head) is labelled “CodeIgniter”, but it’s actually the favicon for my personal site, DerekAllard.com.

    0
  13. 13

    Corey

    November 20th, 2008 8:09 pm

    the etnies favicon links to maxvoltar.com

    0
  14. 14

    aperta

    November 20th, 2008 10:16 pm

    Thanks…

    0
  15. 15

    Seaer

    November 21st, 2008 12:20 am

    I love the new wipeelist.com favicon! sexy and transparent yum

    0
  16. 16

    Eliwagar

    November 21st, 2008 12:37 am

    Hi, is there any palce to submit favicons? Nice Greetings from Germany :)

    ———
    no chance! (Sven)

    0
  17. 17

    David Perel

    November 21st, 2008 1:06 am

    This is a nifty idea! Favicons are like a black art and can sometime be more recognizable / memorable than the site itself!

    0
  18. 18

    Kat

    November 21st, 2008 1:27 am

    A great list. Thanks!
    It’s probably worth noting that animated favicons like the last one on the list won’t display in IE…

    0
  19. 19

    Andrew Butterworth

    November 21st, 2008 1:44 am

    Nice list. I love looking at favicons and seeing how people have re-interpreted their branding for such a small space. Check out this one I did here Link .

    0
  20. 20

    Martin

    November 21st, 2008 2:28 am

    Does smashing magazine have a copy editor? I only skimmed this article and still noticed a good few mistakes. It’s disappointing that the decent content on this site is let down by bad attention to detail in the copy.

    0
  21. 21

    JFK

    November 21st, 2008 3:27 am

    The animated one is more disturbing than useful, as a page, that plays sound on load.

    0
  22. 22

    FinalFrag

    November 21st, 2008 3:28 am

    Nice list, although the one about CodeIgniter is wrong… It shows the favicon of Derek Allard… the one from CodeIgniter is a black flame on a white background (www.codeigniter.com)

    0
  23. 23

    Laura

    November 21st, 2008 4:29 am

    thanks for the mention!!!

    0
  24. 24

    cristian

    November 21st, 2008 5:11 am

    Nice source, thanks!

    0
  25. 25

    Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz

    November 21st, 2008 6:35 am

    @25
    dereks website is called “codeigniter…”
    will change it nevertheless to avoid further misunderstandings.

    0
  26. 26

    andy

    November 21st, 2008 7:33 am

    Thanks Smashing!
    i love favicons – i used them to design my personal homepage of frequently visited sites.

    0
  27. 27

    Web Major

    November 21st, 2008 8:56 am

    I change mine with the seasons… I think it gives the site a more personal and “with it” feel. Right now it’s the same as my gravatar…

    0
  28. 28

    Soh

    November 21st, 2008 10:33 am

    Any recommended tutorials out there to create favicons? Best practices? Tips?

    0
  29. 29

    penantang.com

    November 21st, 2008 8:30 pm

    favicon is the most things in website..it’s like a core of website…

    0
  30. 30

    Aw Guo

    November 21st, 2008 10:41 pm

    Chinese characters are sometimes a very good choice :)

    0
  31. 31

    John

    November 22nd, 2008 10:44 am

    How about a nice set of iPhone icons/bookmarks?

    0
  32. 32

    Akiva Levy

    November 22nd, 2008 10:54 am

    What’s with the Magen David for Salt Solutions?
    I have never understood when companies choose a religious symbol for their business but then neglect to mention anywhere why they did so.
    In this case, as a Jew, I would expect to visit Salt Solutions and see some evidence of their faith, but no.
    Qoui?

    0
  33. 33

    Eli

    November 23rd, 2008 1:13 am

    Maybe someone would like to comment on my favicon…I did ist for a page with cat related content.

    0
  34. 34

    Peter

    November 23rd, 2008 10:57 pm

    I love it.

    0
  35. 35

    speedcu

    November 24th, 2008 12:11 am

    very nice collection! thanks

    0
  36. 36

    Jaf

    November 26th, 2008 3:28 am

    hmm, nice collection … i have got one too a molecule like favicon

    0
  37. 37

    Joette Audi

    June 18th, 2011 5:37 am

    Terrific work! That is the kind of info that are supposed to be shared across the internet. Disgrace on Google for now not positioning this publish upper! Come on over and seek advice from my site . Thank you =)

    0
  38. 38

    kanye

    August 25th, 2011 10:58 pm

    But one

    0
  1. 1

    Sean

    November 20th, 2008 4:12 pm

    The one listed for CodeIgniter is derekallard… CodeIgniter’s favicon is the little flame.

    +1

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