The most important aspect of designing an individual icon is that it has to be instantly recognizable, you have to know its function, and you need to know exactly what it is. If you are designing a set, the actual design becomes a lot harder, the designer has to face two initial challenges: each icon they design has to be individual and distinctive from the other, and, they also have to have similar features to show that they are related, completing the set. Not an easy task.
Perhaps that is why we love those small indispensible graphical images so much, it’s an appreciation of the hard work, creativity and talent of the designer. And to think, all those hours spent in front of a laptop crafting these little marvels, and then, allowing everyone else to download them for free. To all icon designers we say: “thank you”.
You may be interested in the following related posts:
- 55 Free High Quality Icon Sets
- 50 Fresh Useful Icon Sets For Your Next Design
- 50 Free High-Quality Icon Sets
- Free Icon Sets: E-Commerce, Food, Science, Avatars And Summer
In this post we present a round-up of fresh high-quality icons that are available for free download and (sometimes only for personal) use. Please make sure to read license agreements before using icons in your designs – they can change from time to time.
e-Commerce Icons
Money Back Guarantee Icon Set (registration is required) 100 % Money Back Guarantee Vector Icon Set. The set contains 3 versions: 30 day – 60 day and 90 day.
Open Source Icons - (37signals)
10 Free High-Quality E-Commerce Icons
Credit Card Icons 22 Credit Card Icons that are perfect for your sites.
Useful Icons and Vectors
Daily Exhaust: Hand & Arrow Icons
The Webdesigner Sketchup Icons
Web Buttons Vector Compilation of the free web button vectors and elements – useful for wireframing and prototyping!
500+ Free Vector Traffic Signs
Packaging Vector Pack This Vector Freebie Pack is created by Ian Yates and is available exclusively from Vectortuts+. If your looking for high quality graphics to mock up your next client presentation with, then check out these packaging graphics.
Exclusive Stationery Vector Pack This new Vector Freebie Pack is created by Ian Yates. If you are looking for high quality graphics to mock up your next client presentation with, then check out these graphics.
How to be Green at Home
Simple and Minimal icons
Free iPhone Toolbar Icons Icons designed specifically for iPhone developers, available for free for anyone to use commercially under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada license.
Glyphish Designed and carefully optimized for use on toolbars and tab bars in iPhone apps, these icons are also perfect for Android apps, websites, t-shirts, tattoos and more.
A travel and business vector pack
RRZE Icon Set
Characters so far 35 very original and eccentric characters.
Beautiful Icons
Philippe Starck Icons Philippe Starck icons for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux.
Snow Leopard Icon The new version of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, was just released, so the designer decided to celebrate it with a new artwork. Download the Snow Leopard Wallpaper as well!
Moleskine Helvetica Icon
Free Cute Furry Monster Icons “I’ve put together a little family of monsters, available for free download in the form of icons. Each monster can be found in PNG, ICNS and ICO filetypes for use on your Mac, PC or for inclusion in your website designs.”
LiveJournal turns 10 Anniversary edition icons set, LiveJournal is celebrating its 10th Anniversary.
Vector Kitchen Icons Vector Kitchen Icons - 25 different examples of kitchen stuff created in funny cartoon style. Set include: teapot, knifes, saucepan, pot, frying pan, plates, cups, microwave oven, forks, kitchen-range and so on. Soft gradients and colors, smooth contours, creative shapes.
Desktop & GUI Icon Sets
Generic Applications This icon set is released under a special license which will allow software developers to use this set of 7 icons in their projects.
Bevel and Emboss Ever wondered how are all these glossy looking icons made? This is not a tutorial how to make them, as there is a lot of these out there, this is a fully editable PSD source you can download for free and use them for your projects (commercial and non-profit) or to see how this look is achieved.
32px icons set A simple set of icons, available only in the resolution 32×32px, only in the iContainter format.
Windows 7 DVD-Box
GiNUX There are 64 icons in this set, all are 64x64px and available in both PNG. and ICO. formats.
