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33 Beautiful Open-Source Icon Sets

118 points by alokepillai 7y ago

tom4000 7y ago
Not all of the presented icon sets are Open-Sourced. Some are, some are free and for some you have to pay with information about you like your email address. So the title sounds nice but it is just wrong.
qwerty456127 7y ago
Seems like the meaning of "beautiful" is a little bit too specific today.
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  Agreed. If you're looking for a different style of icons to use in your application, Tango/GNOME and Breeze are large, complete icon themes. Tango/GNOME Icons Wikipedia pages (previews many but not all icons): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Desktop_icons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Desktop_icons Breeze is a bit more 'modern' and would also work well on HiDPI: https://github.com/KDE/breeze-icons https://github.com/KDE/breeze-icons ; you would probably want to clone the repo and browse the files manually since GitHub isn't great for previewing images. KDE created/used the Oxygen icon theme before Breeze, its style is between Tango/GNOME and Breeze: https://github.com/pasnox/oxygen-icons-png https://github.com/pasnox/oxygen-icons-png
ungzd 7y ago
I'm tired of modern web design. These icons are even not intended to be used on toolbar buttons, but for silly landing page lists. Landings that are all the same on every website. I miss silk icons that were ubiquitous in late 2000s: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/ http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/. I miss Tango Project icons, although Gnome went off-the-rails in their UI design. I miss small UI elements, like on freaking Windows 95 desktop, not optimized for pressing with finger, despite being shown on desktop.
keithnz 7y ago
also, just remember unicode is packed with icons though I find you do have to check if they render correctly.... but mostly they just work though you may need to make your font a bit bigger or it may look like UPDATE: apparently.... HN Isn't unicode friendly...https://pasteboard.co/IpxYWjH.png https://pasteboard.co/IpxYWjH.png
- danShumway 7y ago
  > you do have to check if they render correctly In general, avoid using font-based icons to avoid the problem you run into in your post above. :) SVGs are better in the vast majority of cases where you have control of markup. Fonts are unreliable (esp on mobile) -- not enough that you should avoid them, but enough that you should avoid them for anything you need to look correct. I've seen websites and apps where not only do the unicode symbols not display, they get flat out replaced with different images, since some fonts organize themselves differently. And if they don't display, Unicode doesn't gracefully degrade, it just shows nothing. It's always weirded me out and slightly annoyed me that emoji are associated with Unicode at all, it's a terrible format for accessibility. The more robust, markdown-ish way to do this would be to abandon attaching them to Unicode characters entirely and wholesale switch to the Slack/Twitter convention of spelling things out. :smile: :thumbsup: :cookie: That way your unsupported emoji degrade perfectly, can be translated into multiple languages or be given aliases, and are more future-proof/extensible. If someone has a viewer that understands an emoji they can just swap out the fallback text in-place. Emoji should be built like escalators, not elevators. Plus, spelling them out allows you to use emoji like :squirtle_squad_robbing_bank: or :children_standing_in_cornfield: even though they haven't technically made it into the standard yet. On an unrelated note, for some reason the standards body has stopped responding to any of my emails.
  - SahAssar 7y ago
    iconfonts and unicode icons are two different things. unicode icons are the built in icons that renders correctly (but with slight variations) on any modern device, iconfonts are basically your own icons set as a font, hopefully using Private Use Areas for the codepoints.
linayakunina 7y ago
Thanks for sharing!

118 points by alokepillai 7y ago

Not all of the presented icon sets are Open-Sourced. Some are, some are free and for some you have to pay with information about you like your email address. So the title sounds nice but it is just wrong.

qwerty456127 7y ago

Seems like the meaning of "beautiful" is a little bit too specific today.

the_pwner224 7y ago
Agreed. If you're looking for a different style of icons to use in your application, Tango/GNOME and Breeze are large, complete icon themes. Tango/GNOME Icons Wikipedia pages (previews many but not all icons): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Desktop_icons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Desktop_icons Breeze is a bit more 'modern' and would also work well on HiDPI: https://github.com/KDE/breeze-icons https://github.com/KDE/breeze-icons ; you would probably want to clone the repo and browse the files manually since GitHub isn't great for previewing images. KDE created/used the Oxygen icon theme before Breeze, its style is between Tango/GNOME and Breeze: https://github.com/pasnox/oxygen-icons-png https://github.com/pasnox/oxygen-icons-png

ungzd 7y ago

I'm tired of modern web design. These icons are even not intended to be used on toolbar buttons, but for silly landing page lists. Landings that are all the same on every website. I miss silk icons that were ubiquitous in late 2000s: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/ http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/. I miss Tango Project icons, although Gnome went off-the-rails in their UI design. I miss small UI elements, like on freaking Windows 95 desktop, not optimized for pressing with finger, despite being shown on desktop.

keithnz 7y ago

also, just remember unicode is packed with icons though I find you do have to check if they render correctly.... but mostly they just work though you may need to make your font a bit bigger or it may look like UPDATE: apparently.... HN Isn't unicode friendly...https://pasteboard.co/IpxYWjH.png https://pasteboard.co/IpxYWjH.png

danShumway 7y ago
> you do have to check if they render correctly In general, avoid using font-based icons to avoid the problem you run into in your post above. :) SVGs are better in the vast majority of cases where you have control of markup. Fonts are unreliable (esp on mobile) -- not enough that you should avoid them, but enough that you should avoid them for anything you need to look correct. I've seen websites and apps where not only do the unicode symbols not display, they get flat out replaced with different images, since some fonts organize themselves differently. And if they don't display, Unicode doesn't gracefully degrade, it just shows nothing. It's always weirded me out and slightly annoyed me that emoji are associated with Unicode at all, it's a terrible format for accessibility. The more robust, markdown-ish way to do this would be to abandon attaching them to Unicode characters entirely and wholesale switch to the Slack/Twitter convention of spelling things out. :smile: :thumbsup: :cookie: That way your unsupported emoji degrade perfectly, can be translated into multiple languages or be given aliases, and are more future-proof/extensible. If someone has a viewer that understands an emoji they can just swap out the fallback text in-place. Emoji should be built like escalators, not elevators. Plus, spelling them out allows you to use emoji like :squirtle_squad_robbing_bank: or :children_standing_in_cornfield: even though they haven't technically made it into the standard yet. On an unrelated note, for some reason the standards body has stopped responding to any of my emails.
- SahAssar 7y ago
  iconfonts and unicode icons are two different things. unicode icons are the built in icons that renders correctly (but with slight variations) on any modern device, iconfonts are basically your own icons set as a font, hopefully using Private Use Areas for the codepoints.

linayakunina 7y ago

Thanks for sharing!