The purpose of icons, no matter the application, is to communicate to visitors in an effective and efficient way. Icons remove the need to spell every instruction out, and thus makes more of the time and space available to communicate something to a user. Icons are great in web design as well because, again, you can communicate more to your visitors in less time, and any webmaster knows the value of web real estate. The idea is to reduce complexity and maximize usability, and icons do just that!
Here we provide a wide assortment of icons that are great for both web design and desktop use. Not all of the free icons below are allowed to be used for commercial purposes, so please read the disclaimers on each before using them in any commercial projects. However, you can feel free to use all of the icons below for private projects.
Icons for Web Design
Email Me Icons
This icon set contains 11 icons in sizes 32×32px, 48×48px, 128×128px in PNG format
Rounder Icons
43 rounded 128×128 PNG icons
Aesthetica Icon Set
This set contains the following icons in 32-bit transparency PNG and Photoshop’s PSD.
WYSIWYG Sapphire Icons
This icon set, as the name indicates, can find its use wherever you might need WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing or similar actions in your applications.
Iconbase’s selection
high quality icons for Windows and/or Mac.
Project Folders pack
Project Folders Icons Pack set includes 4 PNG icons for Windows (XP and Vista).
Social Bookmarks Iconset 2
This set includes icons for Furl, Windows live, Blinklist, Blogger, Lifelogger etc. All icons are sized to 64×64 in PNG format
20 Buttons
Ganato Free Icons
Free PSD Icons (24 icon sets)
Free Icons for Web & Application Interface Systems
140 PNG all free Icons. Icons come in 4 sizes. Here is a preview.
20 Free Sunny Buttons
There is also a .PSD source.
80×15 pixels in 2 styles.
Pixelicious
150 icons mainly intended for developers. 32×32 pixel.
40 Vector Icons for Apple Products
Icons for Your Desktop and Design
Air Mail Icons
32×32px – 512×512 px icon for Mac and PC.
File Icons
Includes a total of 100 PNGs and 100 Icons.
iZ3 Icons
The package contains 20 different icons for Windows XP & Vista, 7 different colors, 256×256 Pixel PNG previews, 256×256 ico formats for XP & Vista.
White Leopard Icons, Black Leopard Icons
This icon set for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) contains 19 folder icons in both .icns- and .png-format (128×128 and 512×512px).
Vista Style Ultimate IconPackager
Includes new gray folders, updated Vista Sounds, and also new file icons. 19Mb.
BlackAqua Safari Icon
Icns, png and ico – max 256×256px.
Camino Icons
A few icons for the Mac OSX super browser Camino, 5 colors and a retro look
Hardwaremx
7 icons in various sizes. For Mac and Windows.
Square Compass
128px, 256px and 512px in .png.
iTweek’s icon sets
A small selection of nice icon sets, among them the Skype icon, Ipod Nano and the Graphic Converter.
Resources
You can find even more free icons in the
- IconShock.com
A free icons forum
Great collection of nice icons. Some of them already caught my eye…
[...] Ultimate Icon Package (tags: icons design) [...]
Wow…awesome, thx for sharing
very cool collection thank you for sharing
Hello. This is kind of an “unconventional” question , but have other visitors asked you how get the menu bar to look like you’ve got it? I also have a blog and am really looking to alter around the theme, however am scared to death to mess with it for fear of the search engines punishing me. I am very new to all of this …so i am just not positive exactly how to try to to it all yet. I’ll just keep working on it one day at a time Thanks for any help you can offer here.
Valuable information and excellent design you got here! I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and time into the stuff you post!! Thumbs up
I’m actually experienced with this, and I 100% agree with you.