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Hi all; I designed a site called Iconduck (https://iconduck.com https://iconduck.com). There are so many dope open source icon sets out there. I brought a bunc

Hi all; I designed a site called Iconduck (https://iconduck.com https://iconduck.com). There are so many dope open source icon sets out there. I brought a bunch of them (132 so far) under one roof. I made them searchable (using typesense.org), and list out the license details and link back to the site or GitHub repo. I'm not much of a designer, and it's just a first stab at the concept. It's been done, but I wanted to also build it API-first, since I know it would be useful to be able to search through them all for developers. I'm always on the lookout for new icon libraries to include, and plan on making it easier to learn more about the designers themselves. If you have any ideas on icon sets or libraries to include please let me know in the comments :)

t_smith 6y ago
Great job on the launch - I'm always trying to grab new icon sets. I'd love to be able to re-color icons (e.g. black --> white) and group them for batch downloads.
- onassar 6y ago
  Yep the recoloring should be available pretty soon, as well as batch downloads :)
rayrag 6y ago
Could you list all those 132 icon sets somewhere - iconduck.com/sets returns 404 and in iconduck.com/licenses you are showing only 1-2 set for each license.
- onassar 6y ago
  Yep I had those listed, but ran into some performance issues. Will get that worked out (you guessed the right path, btw ;) If you want, you can join the MailChimp so that I can let you know when that page is back up: https://iconduck.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=66c12f50e51bb6247d9246ecd&id=dc2efc6035 https://iconduck.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=66c12f50e51...
superasn 6y ago
Website looks great and returns icons for all my searches. I hope I never have to use flaticon again after this. Their database of icons is amazing but website is so annoying.
- onassar 6y ago
  Great to hear. I actually wanted to mention that Typesense very-generously is powering our search (https://typesense.org https://typesense.org). They've been soooo easy to work with, so def consider them for any search projects. Regarding flaticon: what about the site do you find annoying? This way I know what to avoid ;)
  - chrisBob 6y ago
    One feature I like on flaticon that you are missing is the option to download a png at a certain size. SVG is great, but if I want something quick to drop into an iOS app, grabbing the png at 64 pixels wide is very convenient.
    - onassar 6y ago
      I'm working on that right now. Hoping to have it up later tonight ;)
  - superasn 6y ago
    > Regarding flaticon: what about the site do you find annoying? This way I know what to avoid ;) Oh so many things but being OSS I think you'll side-step most of them by virtue. But just to name a few, the way they mix premium icons inside free icons and trick you to click it. Download limit of 10 icons or so. The graphics of a animated crying person telling you to attribute the icon. The shady exit popup windows when you click on the page for the first time. Oh so many other annoying things; only if their database of icons wasn't so big.
    - onassar 6y ago
      Thanks for the context and background. I believe one of the founders has commented in this thread, so I'll let them respond directly to that feedback. I think you're right, though, regarding side-stepping things. I'd really love for this to be a long term OSS project that could pull in a bunch of developers and designers. I don't mind contributing my time and some hardware to help w/ the problem.
breck 6y ago
Love it! Search is a little slow for me (instant search would be great!) but other than that, awesome! Especially for a "first stab!"
- onassar 6y ago
  Thanks! The search is powered by Typesense (https://typesense.org https://typesense.org), but there's a good chance I'm not running the queries properly. Will look into that, and hope to add instant search soon.
sanketdasgupta 6y ago
Will you be open sourcing the site itself?
- onassar 6y ago
  Hoping on it. I'm not as familiar with modern approaches to open sourcing the whole platform (I'm a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to development), but in the short term, I'll be open sourcing a ton of data for all the different icon sets, as well as little scripts and plugins I built for Iconduck.
sytelus 6y ago
Super important: your website title should include search terms! It currently just says "Iconduck". It should be something like "Iconduck - free open source icons, images and cliparts"
- onassar 6y ago
  Yep! Will get that data updated soon. Very much an MVP ;)
spatley 6y ago
Great site, would love to see advanced search, especially to search within a specific icon set. Often I am building a graphic and want consistency across images, so finding an icon I like and then taking all other images I use from the same set would be super useful.
- onassar 6y ago
  Yep! I already have that functionality done, I just haven't gotten around to building a nice UI/UX for that. On it, though.
amelius 6y ago
Check out: https://thenounproject.com/ https://thenounproject.com/ This site has a similar goal, with a huge amount of icons already available, free to download.
- onassar 6y ago
  Yep I know them very well! They're amazing! I wanted to build something that wasn't so much a product, but more so about the open source community and all the icons. They're a fantastic company and product, though!
  - amelius 6y ago
    I just checked them again, and I must say that I'm a bit disappointed in how they seem to have become more commercially oriented over the years.
    - onassar 6y ago
      Yeh it's tricky. They have some pretty amazing icons and services, and probably one of the most reliable APIs I've worked with. And so, that costs $. It is a bummer, but there's always that trade off I suppose. Hoping Iconduck can fill a bit of a void when it comes to open source contributions. I'll be very consistent with it, adding new icons every week, improving the searching, and the design.
      - amelius 6y ago
        Can't you (legally) pull all the Create Commons-licensed icons from their website? Have you tried contacting the original creators?
        onassar 6y ago
        Do you mean from Noun Project? I wouldn't do that (for a couple reasons). The main one, is that I want to always be able to link back directly to the creator's repo and license. It gets a bit meta when people start collecting icons from other 3rd party sites. As for whether it's allowed, I think it depends on the specific license. For example, some licenses may not allow for redistribution generally, but then may grant a special license to a provider (for example, like Noun Project). So then, you may find yourself violating a license that you didn't even know about. So the rule is, I'll only include icons that have licenses that specifically allow redistribution and attribution, and I'll almost always link back to the repo. The exception is some sets aren't hosted through GitHub or GitLab, so I'll link back to their respective website.
slim 6y ago
I was surprised the site did not have an icon, so I searched for duck and found the duckduckgo icon. are you sure it's opensource ?
- onassar 6y ago
  Yep; those icons can be used freely, however Trademarks apply. Generally, that means you can use it (for example, link to Duck Duck Go), but you probably couldn't sell it on t-shirts
- mrkwse 6y ago
  The duckduckgo icons are labelled as such. Plenty of icon sets will have recognisable brand assets for the likes of social media platforms and so on, which will allow use according to certain guidelines. Their inclusion probably isn't an issue in itself, but the blanket guidance in the copy above the result will be. > The icons below can be used for Personal & Commercial purposes. They can be used on your website, branding and designs. Obviously assets relating to existing brands will never be permitted for use in the branding of an unaffiliated party. onassar may want to update the guidelines to note such exclusions.
  - onassar 6y ago
    Thanks for the notes mrkwse. I try to show copy like the following when trademarks show up: > Naturally, trademarks apply to any brand icons or logos above. That means that you can use them in practice (for example, linking to the respective service), but that the company likely has limitations on how else they can be used. I need to do some work to communicate that better :)
    - paledot 6y ago
      Might be worth being very explicit which icons are trademarks. Facebook is obvious to basically anyone with an internet connection at this point, but there are plenty of brands that, despite (or because of) paying 7 figures to a big name design firm, ended up with super generic-looking symbols as their logos. "Ooh, that's a great apple/bird icon, I'll just use that."
shuringai 6y ago
why "duck" though?
- onassar 6y ago
  Haha fair enough. I like ducks, and thought it was a memorable name that had the domain available :)

t_smith 6y ago

Great job on the launch - I'm always trying to grab new icon sets. I'd love to be able to re-color icons (e.g. black --> white) and group them for batch downloads.

onassar 6y ago
Yep the recoloring should be available pretty soon, as well as batch downloads :)

rayrag 6y ago

Could you list all those 132 icon sets somewhere - iconduck.com/sets returns 404 and in iconduck.com/licenses you are showing only 1-2 set for each license.

onassar 6y ago
Yep I had those listed, but ran into some performance issues. Will get that worked out (you guessed the right path, btw ;) If you want, you can join the MailChimp so that I can let you know when that page is back up: https://iconduck.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=66c12f50e51bb6247d9246ecd&id=dc2efc6035 https://iconduck.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=66c12f50e51...

superasn 6y ago

Website looks great and returns icons for all my searches. I hope I never have to use flaticon again after this. Their database of icons is amazing but website is so annoying.

onassar 6y ago
Great to hear. I actually wanted to mention that Typesense very-generously is powering our search (https://typesense.org https://typesense.org). They've been soooo easy to work with, so def consider them for any search projects. Regarding flaticon: what about the site do you find annoying? This way I know what to avoid ;)
- chrisBob 6y ago
  One feature I like on flaticon that you are missing is the option to download a png at a certain size. SVG is great, but if I want something quick to drop into an iOS app, grabbing the png at 64 pixels wide is very convenient.
  - onassar 6y ago
    I'm working on that right now. Hoping to have it up later tonight ;)
- superasn 6y ago
  > Regarding flaticon: what about the site do you find annoying? This way I know what to avoid ;) Oh so many things but being OSS I think you'll side-step most of them by virtue. But just to name a few, the way they mix premium icons inside free icons and trick you to click it. Download limit of 10 icons or so. The graphics of a animated crying person telling you to attribute the icon. The shady exit popup windows when you click on the page for the first time. Oh so many other annoying things; only if their database of icons wasn't so big.
  - onassar 6y ago
    Thanks for the context and background. I believe one of the founders has commented in this thread, so I'll let them respond directly to that feedback. I think you're right, though, regarding side-stepping things. I'd really love for this to be a long term OSS project that could pull in a bunch of developers and designers. I don't mind contributing my time and some hardware to help w/ the problem.

breck 6y ago

Love it! Search is a little slow for me (instant search would be great!) but other than that, awesome! Especially for a "first stab!"

onassar 6y ago
Thanks! The search is powered by Typesense (https://typesense.org https://typesense.org), but there's a good chance I'm not running the queries properly. Will look into that, and hope to add instant search soon.

sanketdasgupta 6y ago

Will you be open sourcing the site itself?

onassar 6y ago
Hoping on it. I'm not as familiar with modern approaches to open sourcing the whole platform (I'm a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to development), but in the short term, I'll be open sourcing a ton of data for all the different icon sets, as well as little scripts and plugins I built for Iconduck.

sytelus 6y ago

Super important: your website title should include search terms! It currently just says "Iconduck". It should be something like "Iconduck - free open source icons, images and cliparts"

onassar 6y ago
Yep! Will get that data updated soon. Very much an MVP ;)

spatley 6y ago

Great site, would love to see advanced search, especially to search within a specific icon set. Often I am building a graphic and want consistency across images, so finding an icon I like and then taking all other images I use from the same set would be super useful.

onassar 6y ago
Yep! I already have that functionality done, I just haven't gotten around to building a nice UI/UX for that. On it, though.

amelius 6y ago

Check out: https://thenounproject.com/ https://thenounproject.com/ This site has a similar goal, with a huge amount of icons already available, free to download.

onassar 6y ago
Yep I know them very well! They're amazing! I wanted to build something that wasn't so much a product, but more so about the open source community and all the icons. They're a fantastic company and product, though!
- amelius 6y ago
  I just checked them again, and I must say that I'm a bit disappointed in how they seem to have become more commercially oriented over the years.
  - onassar 6y ago
    Yeh it's tricky. They have some pretty amazing icons and services, and probably one of the most reliable APIs I've worked with. And so, that costs $. It is a bummer, but there's always that trade off I suppose. Hoping Iconduck can fill a bit of a void when it comes to open source contributions. I'll be very consistent with it, adding new icons every week, improving the searching, and the design.
    - amelius 6y ago
      Can't you (legally) pull all the Create Commons-licensed icons from their website? Have you tried contacting the original creators?
      - onassar 6y ago
        Do you mean from Noun Project? I wouldn't do that (for a couple reasons). The main one, is that I want to always be able to link back directly to the creator's repo and license. It gets a bit meta when people start collecting icons from other 3rd party sites. As for whether it's allowed, I think it depends on the specific license. For example, some licenses may not allow for redistribution generally, but then may grant a special license to a provider (for example, like Noun Project). So then, you may find yourself violating a license that you didn't even know about. So the rule is, I'll only include icons that have licenses that specifically allow redistribution and attribution, and I'll almost always link back to the repo. The exception is some sets aren't hosted through GitHub or GitLab, so I'll link back to their respective website.

slim 6y ago

I was surprised the site did not have an icon, so I searched for duck and found the duckduckgo icon. are you sure it's opensource ?

onassar 6y ago
Yep; those icons can be used freely, however Trademarks apply. Generally, that means you can use it (for example, link to Duck Duck Go), but you probably couldn't sell it on t-shirts
mrkwse 6y ago
The duckduckgo icons are labelled as such. Plenty of icon sets will have recognisable brand assets for the likes of social media platforms and so on, which will allow use according to certain guidelines. Their inclusion probably isn't an issue in itself, but the blanket guidance in the copy above the result will be. > The icons below can be used for Personal & Commercial purposes. They can be used on your website, branding and designs. Obviously assets relating to existing brands will never be permitted for use in the branding of an unaffiliated party. onassar may want to update the guidelines to note such exclusions.
- onassar 6y ago
  Thanks for the notes mrkwse. I try to show copy like the following when trademarks show up: > Naturally, trademarks apply to any brand icons or logos above. That means that you can use them in practice (for example, linking to the respective service), but that the company likely has limitations on how else they can be used. I need to do some work to communicate that better :)
  - paledot 6y ago
    Might be worth being very explicit which icons are trademarks. Facebook is obvious to basically anyone with an internet connection at this point, but there are plenty of brands that, despite (or because of) paying 7 figures to a big name design firm, ended up with super generic-looking symbols as their logos. "Ooh, that's a great apple/bird icon, I'll just use that."

shuringai 6y ago

why "duck" though?

onassar 6y ago
Haha fair enough. I like ducks, and thought it was a memorable name that had the domain available :)