WebCodr.com

When designing a site I can often spend hours trying to create or find suitable graphical elements for each page. The solution was to keep a substantial library of icons and bullets ready for any occasion. Here I have put together my favourite free and open source icon libraries.

Please read the license for each collection carefully. I always keep a readme.txt in my folders with the license, so I know where I stand when creating commercial sites for clients. In any case, it is common to use “Copyright 2007 domain.com and its licensors” in your footer, as you do not own the copyright for the icons.

Silk Icons v1.3 (1,100 icons)

The first set of icons we cover from FamFamFam, this collection of tiny 16×16 icons in PNG format is great for almost any purpose. Icons are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License - use and change all you like, but please link back to the author’s page.

Mini Icons (144 icons)

Another great collection from FamFamFam at 16×16 in GIF format. Most are suitable for file format icons, and there are a few toolbar icons in there too.

Mint Icons (18 icons)

A lickable selection of ultra-tiny 11×11 icons in PNG format. Minty green, loosely-based on the Mint statistics software. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

Country Flags (247 icons)

If, like me, you’ve lusted after the country flags in Skype then this is the collection for you. Almost every country is represented with a 16×11 icon. Filenames follow the ISO 3166-1 country code specification. You are free to use these icons for any purpose without attribution.

Laurent Baumann’s Mac Icons (700+ icons)

Icons for MacOS X has a distinctive look-and-feel that can compliment the right web design. Laurent has released some excellent icons suitable for lots of purposes online, under Creative Commons 3.0 Licence. Non-commercial use only.

Tango Desktop Project (273 icons)

Designed to create a consistent user experience for Open Source software, these icons are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License. They come in 16×16, 22×22 and 32×32 PNGs as well as the SVG source file. Almost everything is covered, including toolbars, dialogs, networking, applications, file types, country flags and much more. Also have a look at the additional sets available.

Icon King (63+ icons)

Created by David Vignoni, primarily for the KDE Project and related icon projects. Please check the individual licensing information for each icon set before using.

Red Hat Icons (88 icons)

Thanks to PHP Kitchen for this one - a great collection of open source icons released by one of the Redhat projects. Each icon is around 48×48 and supplied in PNG format. Perfect for online application developers.

80×16 Buttons (1,746 icons)

Another collection found by PHP Kitchen, icons in various formats at 80×16 pixels. “There used to be a nice zip of those 80×15 icons that have recently sprouted up on everyone’s site - including this one - at Joe Stump’s site but it looks like he’s moving servers at the moment. Don’t know if these mini-icons have a catch name but surely the great thing about them is you can link to so much stuff in so little space.” No license information is included. Some are more useful than others

Pardon My Icons (460 icons)

Jeffrey Zeldman presents a set of 460 zany and unique avatar icons. Perfect for blogs and forums, each icon is 32×32 in GIF format. Free to use on your web site, although a link back to Pardon My Icons would be appreciated.

There are some great sites that haven’t made the list. Why? Sites like Iconfactory are only free for personal desktop use, while InterfaceLIFT and similar sites are a quagmire of various licenses (and not all icons are suitable for web development anyway). The most excellent 300 images from 1800 sites collection is not available to use at all, but can be useful for inspiration. And I’m afraid if you want Flash-animated bouncing smilies dressed in camouflage you’ll have to find them yourself.

What free-to-use icon collections have you found? Let us know!