Icon search engine

I have been using IconFinder.com for years now and I can attest that it is the best icon search engine out there. Almost all icons used in VWO come from there. I just wish that icon library was more comprehensive that what it is now but all in all, a well-executed site.

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

Thanks, man. I love your tool and I'm happy to provide you with icons.

Every week I add 10 new icon sets so the icon library is growing. I have chosen not to let the users upload icons directly to make sure the quality is high.

codefisher2• 16 years ago

It has been around for awhile, been using it since about 2008. Cool service.

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

2007

codefisher2• 16 years ago

Went and did a search on my email, the first time I recommenced it to someone else was the 13th Oct 2007. So yeah 2007 it is!

scrrr• 16 years ago

Nice service, just tried searching "save" and I find it funny that what apparently is the standard icon still shows a floppy disk. Somebody should survey 10 year old kids if they know what it means..

count• 16 years ago

Of course they know what it is - it's the 'save icon' :) Wait, it used to be real?!

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

I think the floppy icon will stick around a while longer. How many times have you heard the rotary phone ringing bell sound used as a ring tone lately?

CamperBob2• 16 years ago

You have a point there, but I suspect the actual reason for the rotary-phone sound's continuing popularity is that all of the other stock iPhone ringtones are lame as hell.

cabalamat• 16 years ago

Well, motion pictures are still called "films". And letters still have serifs on them, despite the original reason for it (easier to engrave in stone) no longer being valid.

wnoise2• 16 years ago

I'd really like a citation for serifs being easier to engrave in stone. That really doesn't make sense to me. I'd expect things like runes -- entirely straight lines, minimal decoration -- to be easier to carve.

toddmorey• 16 years ago

I'll bet before the floppy disk icon gets a chance to be replaced, the concept of manually saving files will be obsolete. It just might serve us 'til the end.

ugh• 16 years ago

I don’t think there is a Save command anywhere in the default iPad apps or the iWork apps. Even Office could easily switch away from forcing the users to save. They already have this nice, big menu with recent documents in their newest version, all they need to do is rework that into a sort of library of all documents. Then my dad, too, would no longer be confused by saving Word documents.

stcredzero2• 16 years ago

Right. It's been long enough since it appeared in R&D labs, that orthogonal persistence should become the norm. OS X already has it in the System Preferences.

charleso• 16 years ago

Don't forget to ask about the copy-and-paste glue pot and brush (or artist's oblong wooden paint palette) while you're at it.

It's pretty common for the original meaning of symbols to disappear into the mists of time. Using a floppy for 'save' seems like a good one to add to humanity's set of 21st Century pictographs.

natfriedman• 16 years ago

We still use a Manila folder for a directory, even though people rarely use cardboard folders anymore.

In fact, we still call them Manila folders - but everyone's forgotten that the "Manila" part of the name comes from the fact that they were made from Manila hemp, a fiber produced in the Philippines.

Language is made of these kinds of artifacts - written, spoken, and visual language.

tuxychandru• 16 years ago

The save icon on Ubuntu's default theme uses a downward arrow pointing at a hard disk. While not entirely relevant, even clear looks icon theme in Gnome uses a downward arrow pointing to a rack in a file cabinet.

stcredzero2• 16 years ago

The save icon on Ubuntu's default theme uses a downward arrow pointing at a hard disk.

With the move towards Flash SSDs, even this is going to become quaint. If Apple keeps going the direction it is now, OS X or its successor is going to have orthogonal persistence cached on local SSDs and replicated in the cloud. Eventually, no one is going to even think about saving things anymore.

utoku3• 16 years ago

We use the floppy disk for the save icon, but we don't use floppies anymore. Just something that has been bothering me.

nixy• 16 years ago

What would you propose as a "save" icon?

pornel2• 16 years ago

Same button that closes the window. Seems to work for Mac OS X.

kevinbutler• 16 years ago

Save everything. Don't make the user click save. Even better if you can allow a rollback to any point in time. Better still if you can roll back to significant changes, with significant determined in terms of the domain context.

michael_dorfman• 16 years ago

We also don't throw our floppy disks into a trash can to eject them, but that's what the "intuitive" Mac interface proposed, all those years ago.

If these things bother you, you probably shouldn't study etymology. Most words (and concepts) retain leftover residues of previous strata of meaning. Such is change...

blacksmythe• 16 years ago

  >> what the "intuitive" Mac interface proposed, all those years ago.

That was never intuitive. I thought that was a bad choice from the beginning.

utoku3• 16 years ago

Actually, studying etymology (which probably doesn't stand for icons yet) is fun because of that reason.

Even our letters are left overs from old icons. Alpha for the ox, Beta for the house. I am just suggesting that the floppy probably won't have its letter someday.

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

I have made a blog post related to the choice of metaphors for icons: http://www.iconfinder.com/blog/4/

tyng• 16 years ago

You made a good point. Those floppy disk icons probably mean nothing to Gen X.

I'll refrain from using that icon on my websites/apps from now on.

sovok• 16 years ago

Nifty. Only the info window is 38px too far left in FF 3.6.11: http://imgur.com/M7546.png

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

I'll fix that.

mdoyle• 16 years ago

great service, one of the best.

StavrosK• 16 years ago

That is fantastically useful, thank you.

emilsedgh• 16 years ago

I dont understand why people dont use consistent icons on their apps.

I always choose an icon set (Oxygen, Tango, etc) and use it for whole project. Sometimes there are missing icons, but i think its worth the consistency i get.

Same style and same palette for all my icons.

symptic• 16 years ago

Most of the icons on the site are part of an icon set which is easily found. Been using IconFinder for a short while and it's a great service.

lubos• 16 years ago

this is great, I was using google images up until now for this... not anymore

icode2• 16 years ago

I would say its not legal. Many icons are licensed "for personal use only". So putting them on a website with advertising seems to be against the license.

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

I only put icons with this license on the site when I have permission from the author.

icode2• 16 years ago

Ah, ok! Didnt think of that.

utoku3• 16 years ago

I saw one that had a free for commercial use only licence. That was different.

arnorhs• 16 years ago

This is great. Sometimes all you need is just a quick Facebook like button.

It's a great way to discover icons. Of course, you would usually want to use only icons from a single icon set, so your icons become consistent through your application.

However, sometimes you get into trouble when the set doesn't have a particular icon. This site could be a life saver if you don't have any budget to contact the original designer and ask for custom work.

Good job iconfinder

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

You can search the different icon sets - just go to iconfinder.com/browse

When you have found a great icon set you can add a search term to the search query e.g. http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=iconset:duesseldorf+star

It works like Google when using the filtype: or site: keywords.

sgt2• 16 years ago

Speaking of icons, I'm pretty much only interested in vector icons, because I can resize them any way I want and I'm doing the quality control when converting to PNG etc.

Bitmap icon quality, even the ones based on original vector artwork, are sometimes simply not up to my standards. My favorite free icon collection is the "Tango" collection, but it is also lacking in a few ways.

So I'm looking for another decent free or commercial vector collection that I can use for my projects. Most of the icon collections I see are selling bitmap versions only. Any ideas?

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

These are probably the best vector icons out there: http://helveticons.ch/

sgt2• 16 years ago

Thanks for the tip. I see they are all single-color, but that's not really a problem since customizing them with colors or gradients is simple to do in Inkscape or Illustrator.

twidlit• 16 years ago

I have been using this for months and the interface is really good and the rights management filter is a very nice touch.

I am hoping it starts indexing/storing vector files soon or maybe have accounts for the artist/shops behind the icons so that people can easily contact then hire them from the site itself.

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

Adding vector version of the icons are definitely next step content-wise.

The account for designers is a feature that is planned and coming within 2 months.

MisterWebz• 16 years ago

Absolutely love the design. Did you hire someone to do it?

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

I did the design, but not the logo. The logo was done by the talented TurboMilk -> http://www.turbomilk.com

They also did a nice illustration for the 404 page: http://www.iconfinder.com/pagenotfound

CoffeeDregs• 16 years ago

That's just really nice and super helpful... Seems as though you have highly targeted content but have no real monetization. What are your plans for monetization?

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

I'm planning to have have a premium area where paying users can get access to quality icons.

jessriedel• 16 years ago

The site has been up for 3 years without monetization? Has it just been on the backburner?

GavinB• 16 years ago

Looks great. Makes me wish I had something that needs icons!

The one thing that was a bit odd to me was the way the tiled icons don't often fill out the last line, even when there are many more pages of results. Typically an incomplete grid sends a message that this is the last page of results.

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

Thank you for the feedback. The last row is always a bit of a headache. Google Images an iStockphoto solves the problem by having results from the next page shown to fill out the last row. So you'll get duplicate results in the search results - maybe that is the best solution.

coreyrecvlohe• 16 years ago

Really useful site. The usual method for myself is to use advanced filters through google, but this is definitely more optimized.

charlief• 16 years ago

Very very nice. Is there any way to categorize icon styles or qualities as well? An example after background colour and file format I would need: "Web 2.0-styled" or "cool/warm". I find the only time I page through search results is looking for specific style qualities.

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

Thanks. Categories are coming within a month.

jessor• 16 years ago

Switched from iconlet. I really like it. The commercial usage filter is a killer feature. Great job!

d3b14n2• 16 years ago

The main problem I observe using iconfinder.com is the mess with different licenses selecting desire icons.

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

This is not just a problem for iconfinder.com but for icons and free web design stuff in general.

d3b14n2• 16 years ago

I mean the lack of fine grain the search.

ceejayoz• 16 years ago

How can there not be a bacon icon?!

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

No narwhal icons either - sorry to let you down.

Omnipresent• 16 years ago

awesome. this definitely beats office clip art search. You should maybe have a section "User's who downloaded this ...also downloaded X icon"

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

Thanks. That's not a bad idea.

levesque• 16 years ago

Is there no support for SVG icons?

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

Not at the moment - but it's coming soon.

PostOnce• 16 years ago

I searched for "Sword". Got a bunch of pictures of locks and keys. :P

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

It searches for both "sword" and "%sword%" (with wildcards in both ends). It ranks results with exact match for "sword" higher than wildcard matches and what you are seeing are icons with the keyword "pasSWORD" since it hits "%sword%"

zimro• 16 years ago

First place I go when I seek a new icon. Simply perfect and easy to use.

ibejoeb• 16 years ago

This is fantastic. Thanks for sharing. This will save me many hours.

AndrewWarner• 16 years ago

It's been my go-to icon search for a long time, but how are you bringing in revenue?

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

It is only ad-based revenue at the moment and with 14MM per month it gives an ok revenue. I'm planning to add premium content in the coming months.

Would you consider paying for high quality icons?

ryanelkins• 16 years ago

I'd consider paying for the ability to use some icons for commercial purposes. Perhaps you could get some sort of affiliate program going? Then you could add another rights type - 'Allowed for commercial use (purchase)' or something like that. Then you could start allowing designers to offer their icons directly. A centralized place for purchased icons would be much nicer than what you have to do now - search all over the web and trudge through lots of designer's websites to try and find what you're looking for.

abraham• 16 years ago

I created an account using Chrome but only the username seems to have been saved. Trying to edit my account results in a white screen so I can't add an email address or change my password. They username I signed up with is "abrahamwilliams"

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

I fixed the bug - it should be working again.

andrewljohnson• 16 years ago

Icon search engine: images.google.com, include the word icon, or specify size

iconfinder25• 16 years ago

Yeah, you can compare the results here:

http://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=computer

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1342...

Icon search engine

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