Whether you want to spice up the look of your desktop, create a unified theme on your website, or use them for graphic design, matching icon sets come in handy. Although in recent times the use of icons has shifted towards web and interface design, icon sets are useful for many purposes.
If you have the proper skills, you can use applications such as Illustrator to customize your vectors and design a spiffy icon set, but why re-create the wheel?
Here are 10 top resources for free icon sets. Download them directly onto your desktop for instant beautification.
FreeIconsDownload.com
FreeIconsDownload is a showcasing site that allows individuals or companies to display their icons. Icons on display are downloadable with the highest quality files free of charge.
IconShock Blog
The IconShock blog offers information on all sorts of free icon sets that you can find on their site. It also offers information on other aspects of design, such as logos and more.
Free Icons Web
This site houses over 15,000 free icons that are downloadable to your Windows, Mac or Linux operating system. You’ll be greeted by 20+ categories ranging anywhere from animal icons to Mac server graphics. Most common format found on the site is PNG and GIF.
IconFinder.Net
Icon Finder lets you browse over 60+ icon sets that can be used in a number of ways. Their goal is to provide the best possible icons to web designers ad developers. You can also submit icons as well.
FastIcon
FastIcon develops custom icon sets for companies and individuals. They have an extensive collection of free icon sets that you can download directly onto your computer free of charge. If they don’t have an icon on their site, they’ll simply create it.
Icon Dock
While Icon Dock might not have a wide variety of icons to choose from, the selection that they currently have is outstanding. You’ll find icons for ecommerce and holidays, while their Mini Pixel icon set is small in terms of size, it still packs a big punch.
DryIcons
DryIcons is managed by a small creative design studio that produces free graphics and icon sets. Best of all there are no commercial licenses to be bought, all icons are to be used freely.
AOD Design Blog
The AOD Design blog provides 100′s of free icon sets for your enjoyment, you can find sets that are complimentary for your desktop along with icons that are a natural fit for web development. AOD Design only asks that individuals who download their icons do not resell the sets.
Icons-Online
Icons-Online.com encourages designers from around the world to become part of their community allowing them to upload free icons. You can browse over 16 pages of free icon sets that are downloadable in PNG format.
Icon Archive
This extensive archive of icons features increadible sets for your site, desktop, and mobile phone. You can find countless amounts of icons through several categories such as Computer, Nature, Sci-Fi, Technology and more.
Have we missed a site that features free icon sets? If so, please feel free to share your tips and thoughts with us below.
My favorite trick is to use linux icon sets
Your readers may also be interested in checking out our free icon sites: http://webtreats.mysitemyway.com and http://icons.mysitemyway.com. Readers can find social media icons on webtreats and over 100 icons in 53 different styles on the icons website. Very soon, we will have 2,000 icons per set, everything from astrology and chinese caligraphy to sports and hobbies.
Very good review. You definitely nailed only the best resources, I particulary liked the iconshock blog, because it gives insight on other design related themes and resources as well. Their photosho plugins review is simply insane!
Keep up the good work. I love your blog! Hope the writer is as cute as the design.
I find this post to be very helpful, I was searching for great looking social icons, this post pretty much sums up all the good ones in one place, resuorceful, bookmarked.