12 + Mega Icon Sets For Designers

Oct

2008

Filed Under: freebies, graphic design, web design | Add a Comment

I admit it, I have an unhealthy addiction to icons. I collect them like they’re going out of style, and when I find a new set, I almost immediately download it with gleeful anticipation.

Hello, my name is Shawn and I’m an iconoholic.

But addictions aside, having a great arsenal of icons at your beck and call can be a lifesaver for web and graphics projects.

Thankfully, there are several excellent free icons sets available. Here are some of my favorites—in no particular order.

Note: This is by no means a complete list of the free icons out there. This is merely a list of some of the icon sets that have a wide range of icons that would be useful to most web and graphic designers.

Fugue

Everyone probably already knows about Silk from FamFam, since you can find them nearly everywhere. However, if you’re looking for the same type of 16 x 16 pixel goodness, it’s worth looking at Fugue from pinvoke.

Fugue’s latest update brings the number of icons up to 971 16 x 16 pixel icons in PNG format. The look of these icons will go with most any type of design.

Also, from pinvoke is Diagona, which is tailored a bit more toward the UI side of icons (with arrows, checks, bullets, etc), has 400 icons (200 10 x 10 pixel icons + 200 16 x 16 pixel icons).

License

Both Fugue and Diagona are free for personal and commercial use under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.

Tango

One of my favorite things visually about Linux is Gnome and its Tango icon theme. You’ve probably seen icons from this set used in many places—even if you didn’t realize it was from Linux.

This is a huge collection of icons (hundreds?) for the Linux OS, including icons for applications, actions, devices, symbols, emotes, mime types and more. Icons come in vector format (SVG) and PNG format in sizes from 16 to 32 pixels.

The really impressive part of the Tango project is that many people are contributing to it so there are even more icons available on Tango’s site and other places that match Tango’s visual style.

License

Tango is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

Oxygen

Like Tango, Oxygen is linked to Linux. It’s an icon set/theme that works with the KDE desktop.

Oxygen is a ginormous icon set, containing well over 1,000 PNG icons in sizes from 16 pixels to 128 pixels (that’s over 1,000 in 16 pixels, 1,000 in 22 pixels, etc), plus vector versions (SVG).

License

Oxygen is released under both a Creative Common Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License and a GNU Library General Public License. You can choose which license you want go use it under.

Classy Icons

Classy Icons from DryIcons is a nicely designed 300 icon set. The set includes icons dealing with databases, online shopping, charts, media devices and more.

Icons are available in PNG, ICO and ICN in sizes from 16 pixels, to 128 pixels. You can download all the icons as a ZIP or browse and download each icon individually if you only need a few.

License

Classy Icons is available through both a free and a commercial license. You can read more details about the differences on their site.

Aesthetica 2

The Aesthetica 2 icon set (also from DryIcons) is a diverse set with a bright, simple design. Like Classy Icons, the set also includes other icons for some oft missed subjects such as databases, media playback buttons, shopping carts and charts.

Aesthetica 2 comes in 181 icons in PNG, ICO and ICN formats. Sizes are available in 16 pixels up to 128 pixels. You can download the icons as a ZIP or browse and download each icon individually if you only need a few.

DryIcons also offers some other nice free icon sets in their Free Icons section, but that could be a whole other post.

License

Aesthetica 2 is available through both a free and a commercial license. You can read more details about the differences on their site.

Bright!

Another great-looking icon set is Bright! from Min Tran.

Bright! contains 148 beautiful icons in vector (EPS) format. This set is well suited for web applications, multimedia and software, with icons for buttons, video, email and even some nice guitars.

License

Bright! is released free for personal and commercial use under a license from IconEden. View the license at IconEden’s website.

Milky

Originally released in 9 installments, Milky (also from the makers of Bright!) is a nice icon set for those who are looking for a more relaxed look. With its rounded corners and green color scheme, Milky is great for blog designs.

Milky comes in over 130 PNG and vector formats (EPS and SVG), in both 48 and 64 pixels sizes.

License

Milky is free for personal and commercial use under a license from IconEden.

Function

Function is a crisp, clean, vibrant icon set, sporting 128 icons. This is a diverse and extremely useful set of icons slanted slightly toward blogs. There are social network icons for Stumble Upon, Digg, and other website icons such as Design Float and Flickr.

License

Function is completely free for whatever you want to use the icons for.

Fresh (Financial)

Yet another icon set from the makers of Bright! comes Fresh Financial Add-On icons. This is a small selection of icons (but still 56) from the full (non-free) Fresh icon set.

The icon set contains 56 financial icons in PNG, TIFF, ICN and ICO formats and in sizes ranging from 16 to 256 pixels.

License

As Bright!, Fresh Financial is free for personal and commercial use under a license from IconEden.

Danish Royalty Free (DRF)

Danish Royalty Free is a brilliant set of icons with a Mac OS feel to it. There are 96 icons (32 x 32 in both PNG and TIFF formats) included in the set.

Finding the link to the correct set is a bit tricky on the site, but look at the slider at the bottom and it’s the one with the keyboard icon.

License

While most of the icons on the site are only for personal use, according to the readme included with the set, this set is free for personal and commercial usage.

DelliPack 1 & DelliPack 2

DelliPack 1 and its big brother DelliPack 2 are both very crisp, clean, rich icon sets released through Smashing Magazine.

While DelliPack 1 only contains 5 icons in PNG format, DelliPack 2 contains 15, more useful icons. Both sets contains icons in sizes from 16 pixels all the way up to 256 pixels.