7 ms·

Svgrepo: Browse SVG vectors and icons

264 points by marcodiego 6y ago

michaelpb 6y ago
I was hoping this was a resuscitation of Open Clip Art. I used to use it so much with Inkscape -- rarely I'd use anything as is, but it was great to have a bunch of different shapes at my finger-tips for tracing, rapid prototyping of graphics, etc. Everything was public domain which made licensing a non-issue. But on the front page: "Most icons and vectors useable for your commercial projects without any royalties" -- This worries me, as it makes it sound like some of these ARE NOT under free licenses, and I'll have to check each one. Is there a "PD only" view?
- jandrese 6y ago
  I'd read that as the author thinks everything is in the Public Domain, but they don't want to be liable if some big work uses something from their page and some guy materializes out of the woodwoork with a billion dollar lawsuit.
  - michaelpb 6y ago
    Gotcha! Well, I might feel okay then using these for placeholder, but not for anything serious... while I wait for an Inkscape-integrated clipart revival :)
- patrickg 6y ago
  https://openclipart.org https://openclipart.org is (somewhat) back. I think this was better browsable and searchable in the past. At least there is some contents available. These pages are really valuable.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Did they ever detail what happened, they kept saying nothing has been lost and they were ready to return the site, any minute now, I gave up looking after a few months assuming they'd had some sort of deletion accident they weren't prepared to confess. IMO contributors deserve to know what happened still. I think there was a lot of agreement that a torrent backup should be made available so the responsibility for the OCAL community's work didn't have to rest with one (?) person who seemingly didn't have time to manage things.
- rectang 6y ago
  Provenance tracking is impractical with a site like this. Provenance tracking is a necessity for non-toy projects. So a site like this has limited utility.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  Yup. If they can't guarantee provenance and license for reuse, then it's worthless to me. But that's just me. YMMV.
  - marcodiego 6y ago
    I don't know if there is a way to restrict search by license, but you can see the license of every item it looks like most are under cc0.
    - joshspankit 6y ago
      There are more than enough “clipart” sites that steal and put CC0. You never know without a clear statement from the original artists.
      - marcodiego 6y ago
        I really suggest you to try to personally contact svgrepo. They definitely don't look like the usual shady clipart site and are sponsored by icons8.
- adamgamble 6y ago
  We've had to tackled the provenance problem at my company (https://www.vecteezy.com https://www.vecteezy.com) by getting all of our content directly from the original designers. It was a crap ton of work and took us several years, but that allowed us to also back it up with legal indemnification. We now have a team of 18 folks reviewing all our content for legal and copyright issues now and we back it up with up to $100k in legal indemnity. So far it seems to be helping.
  - joshspankit 6y ago
    Suggestion: Submit “We've tackled the (SVG?) provenance problem” to HN in the form of a blog post that expands on your reply. Rigorous provenance is vital when it’s vital.
  - sigmaprimus 6y ago
    Many years ago (early 90s) I used some vector art from a CorelDraw cdrom on a buisness card for my company logo. somehow my card made its way to another company's lawer who served me with a cease and desist notice. Being a small company and not wanting to be sued, I complied and stopped using the logo. I can't recall if it was a copyright or trademark issue but I remember the letter caused me a great deal of stress at the time. Looking back now it was sort of a blessing in disguise since because of that letter, the next time I started a company I took the time to learn the simple process of taking a digital photo and converting it into to an SVG and have done that for all of my companies I've started over the years. Creating an SVG logo or clipart from a photograph isn't difficult to do, especially nowadays with Inkscape and actually provides a sort of CMA proof of work to defend against copyright trolls.
    - gardaani 6y ago
      Creating your logo yourself will protect against copyright claims, but it won't protect against trademark violations. Apple sued Prepear because Prepear's logo looked too much like the Apple logo [1]. Prepear spent lots of money to defend themselves and finally made a small change to the logo to make Apple happy. I think the lesson is to be prepared to change icons and logos swiftly when another legal entity sues for copyright or trademark violation. [1] https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/apple-and-prepear-reach-an-agreement-on-pear-shaped-logo-trademark/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/apple-and-prepear-reach-an-ag...
- marcodiego 6y ago
  Click an svg, it display its license.
ruffrey 6y ago
Quite nice. Though it has adverts for Shutterstock which I initially took for native site content.
- teknopaul 6y ago
  me too. saw dark patterns, left.
- amelius 6y ago
  Yes, and you can click them away but they will reappear whenever you click somewhere else. Bad.
- piceas 6y ago
  Some of the native content appears to come from Shutterstock without attribution and a different license. Does not pass the tineye smell test.
kristopolous 6y ago
Reading this first as "sv-grep-o" and then entering in a regex into the search and realizing "oh, svg repo" ... yet another way linux has warped my mind. Good site, thanks.
- aaaaarghZombies 6y ago
  > yet another way linux has warped my mind. Probably my favourite line on the site.
amelius 6y ago
"Repo" makes it sound like it is a version control system.
- turbolance 6y ago
  "repo" is like short for repository I think, so its a good name for the site imo.
swyx 6y ago
hello I'm the self appointed guy who collects similar things for when I need them. https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#logos-incl-company-logos https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#log... https://logosear.ch/ https://logosear.ch/ superfast metasearch of 200k svg logos from GitHub https://seeklogo.com/ https://seeklogo.com/ https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/payment-method-1 https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/payment-method-1 https://www.logology.co/ https://www.logology.co/ https://iconsear.ch/ https://iconsear.ch/ instant search of 50k svg icons from GitHub and GitLab https://macosicons.com/ https://macosicons.com/ icons intended to replace mac desktop icons https://awsicons.dev/ https://awsicons.dev/ AWS icons
rawoke083600 6y ago
Very good ! Congrats on launching. If I could add anything, how about an option to view more than X icons per page. I searched and scan very quickly with my eyes. Would love a see 100 or 200 icons per result page.
indiebrother 6y ago
Looks great thanks for sharing
rleigh 6y ago
As much as I like the concept, am I the only one to find the current design aesthetic boring and infantile? Compared the the really detailed and beautiful vector art people were making with vector editors in the '90s, I find little here genuinely beautiful, just reductive and minimalistic, lacking in any sort of character and with zero detail. SVG is capable of so much more.
- marcodiego 6y ago
  I find the design minimalist, not boring or infantile.

264 points by marcodiego 6y ago

I was hoping this was a resuscitation of Open Clip Art. I used to use it so much with Inkscape -- rarely I'd use anything as is, but it was great to have a bunch of different shapes at my finger-tips for tracing, rapid prototyping of graphics, etc. Everything was public domain which made licensing a non-issue. But on the front page: "Most icons and vectors useable for your commercial projects without any royalties" -- This worries me, as it makes it sound like some of these ARE NOT under free licenses, and I'll have to check each one. Is there a "PD only" view?

jandrese 6y ago
I'd read that as the author thinks everything is in the Public Domain, but they don't want to be liable if some big work uses something from their page and some guy materializes out of the woodwoork with a billion dollar lawsuit.
- michaelpb 6y ago
  Gotcha! Well, I might feel okay then using these for placeholder, but not for anything serious... while I wait for an Inkscape-integrated clipart revival :)
patrickg 6y ago
https://openclipart.org https://openclipart.org is (somewhat) back. I think this was better browsable and searchable in the past. At least there is some contents available. These pages are really valuable.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Did they ever detail what happened, they kept saying nothing has been lost and they were ready to return the site, any minute now, I gave up looking after a few months assuming they'd had some sort of deletion accident they weren't prepared to confess. IMO contributors deserve to know what happened still. I think there was a lot of agreement that a torrent backup should be made available so the responsibility for the OCAL community's work didn't have to rest with one (?) person who seemingly didn't have time to manage things.
rectang 6y ago
Provenance tracking is impractical with a site like this. Provenance tracking is a necessity for non-toy projects. So a site like this has limited utility.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Yup. If they can't guarantee provenance and license for reuse, then it's worthless to me. But that's just me. YMMV.
- marcodiego 6y ago
  I don't know if there is a way to restrict search by license, but you can see the license of every item it looks like most are under cc0.
  - joshspankit 6y ago
    There are more than enough “clipart” sites that steal and put CC0. You never know without a clear statement from the original artists.
    - marcodiego 6y ago
      I really suggest you to try to personally contact svgrepo. They definitely don't look like the usual shady clipart site and are sponsored by icons8.
adamgamble 6y ago
We've had to tackled the provenance problem at my company (https://www.vecteezy.com https://www.vecteezy.com) by getting all of our content directly from the original designers. It was a crap ton of work and took us several years, but that allowed us to also back it up with legal indemnification. We now have a team of 18 folks reviewing all our content for legal and copyright issues now and we back it up with up to $100k in legal indemnity. So far it seems to be helping.
- joshspankit 6y ago
  Suggestion: Submit “We've tackled the (SVG?) provenance problem” to HN in the form of a blog post that expands on your reply. Rigorous provenance is vital when it’s vital.
- sigmaprimus 6y ago
  Many years ago (early 90s) I used some vector art from a CorelDraw cdrom on a buisness card for my company logo. somehow my card made its way to another company's lawer who served me with a cease and desist notice. Being a small company and not wanting to be sued, I complied and stopped using the logo. I can't recall if it was a copyright or trademark issue but I remember the letter caused me a great deal of stress at the time. Looking back now it was sort of a blessing in disguise since because of that letter, the next time I started a company I took the time to learn the simple process of taking a digital photo and converting it into to an SVG and have done that for all of my companies I've started over the years. Creating an SVG logo or clipart from a photograph isn't difficult to do, especially nowadays with Inkscape and actually provides a sort of CMA proof of work to defend against copyright trolls.
  - gardaani 6y ago
    Creating your logo yourself will protect against copyright claims, but it won't protect against trademark violations. Apple sued Prepear because Prepear's logo looked too much like the Apple logo [1]. Prepear spent lots of money to defend themselves and finally made a small change to the logo to make Apple happy. I think the lesson is to be prepared to change icons and logos swiftly when another legal entity sues for copyright or trademark violation. [1] https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/apple-and-prepear-reach-an-agreement-on-pear-shaped-logo-trademark/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/apple-and-prepear-reach-an-ag...
marcodiego 6y ago
Click an svg, it display its license.

ruffrey 6y ago

Quite nice. Though it has adverts for Shutterstock which I initially took for native site content.

teknopaul 6y ago
me too. saw dark patterns, left.
amelius 6y ago
Yes, and you can click them away but they will reappear whenever you click somewhere else. Bad.
piceas 6y ago
Some of the native content appears to come from Shutterstock without attribution and a different license. Does not pass the tineye smell test.

kristopolous 6y ago

Reading this first as "sv-grep-o" and then entering in a regex into the search and realizing "oh, svg repo" ... yet another way linux has warped my mind. Good site, thanks.

aaaaarghZombies 6y ago
> yet another way linux has warped my mind. Probably my favourite line on the site.

amelius 6y ago

"Repo" makes it sound like it is a version control system.

turbolance 6y ago
"repo" is like short for repository I think, so its a good name for the site imo.

swyx 6y ago

hello I'm the self appointed guy who collects similar things for when I need them. https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#logos-incl-company-logos https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#log... https://logosear.ch/ https://logosear.ch/ superfast metasearch of 200k svg logos from GitHub https://seeklogo.com/ https://seeklogo.com/ https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/payment-method-1 https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/payment-method-1 https://www.logology.co/ https://www.logology.co/ https://iconsear.ch/ https://iconsear.ch/ instant search of 50k svg icons from GitHub and GitLab https://macosicons.com/ https://macosicons.com/ icons intended to replace mac desktop icons https://awsicons.dev/ https://awsicons.dev/ AWS icons

rawoke083600 6y ago

Very good ! Congrats on launching. If I could add anything, how about an option to view more than X icons per page. I searched and scan very quickly with my eyes. Would love a see 100 or 200 icons per result page.

indiebrother 6y ago

Looks great thanks for sharing

rleigh 6y ago

As much as I like the concept, am I the only one to find the current design aesthetic boring and infantile? Compared the the really detailed and beautiful vector art people were making with vector editors in the '90s, I find little here genuinely beautiful, just reductive and minimalistic, lacking in any sort of character and with zero detail. SVG is capable of so much more.

marcodiego 6y ago
I find the design minimalist, not boring or infantile.