Quality Alternative to the Silk Icon Set (CC 3.0) | Hacker News Reader

Quality Alternative to the Silk Icon Set (CC 3.0)

pinvoke.com

Sure, nice icons, but what's more interesting is the business model. I wonder if/how it is working.

(edit) Very nice small fonts there too - 5px, 7px, all in TTF - http://www.pinvoke.com/font

"Quality" alternative? There's a loaded title if there ever was one :)

How are these better than Silk in terms of "quality"? They're certainly not bad, and there's an awesome amount of choice here, but they're more anti-aliased and less obvious than the Silk icons. Visually appealing, perhaps, but we're talking icons, not fine art. The ability to pay to not give attribution is interesting, however.

So, great work, but it seems rude to call these a "quality alternative" to Silk, which remains an excellent set of icons.

Quality qualifies 'alternative', as in, this is a viable alternative to Silk.

Sorry if the title caused confusion. Silk is awesome -- I think that goes without saying. I found this set interesting only because it is the first free alternative that seemed worth considering.

Ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

You can go bonkers defining quality.

I haven't. How exactly does that book approach the issue?

These icons are 16x16 - not good for iPhone or modern web design where large icons rule. Any ideas on large cheap icons?

I used http://icondrawer.com (their sets are less than $100, but not free if that's what you're looking for)

Awesome, thanks.

I don't mind paying a bit, although I'm more used to cheaper stuff around $4/set like http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?text=icon+set&... or http://www.bigstockphoto.com/search.php?photo_name=icon+set&...

Well it certainly does seem you get what you pay for - the icon drawer sets are of a much higher caliber than these... then again, both the Fugue icons (linked in story) and Silk are free and certainly of excellent quality...

wikimedia often has useful stuff if you're prepared to dig for it: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Icons

Wow! That's a huge list. I hope someone made a search engine to search wikicommons (something other than their inbuilt one). Although I can still use google with the 'site:' parameter.

And smashingmazagine posts a lot of icon sets. But most of them are very specific icon sets(for specific use on specific category sites). Like... (unable to explain, but you'll understand if you take a look at their posts)

They're largley intended for desktop application development... thanks to the OP - these'll certainly come in handy.

iStockPhoto is amazing for large, professional icons. You can buy sets of icons (usually around 12 icons/set) for about $1 per icon. It's better than the alternative of having to shell out $100+ for a large icon set, when you really only need a couple out of the batch.

http://www.123rf.com/ is the cheapest stock photo site I've found. I have seen some of the same content on this site as istockphoto for as much as 10 times less. Lots of usable images on 123rf cost only one credit.

Tango's also pretty good: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Library

Free icons have a lifetime. If everyone is using it, it's time to find a new set. Tango is worn out. My grandma uses Tango on her website.

She must be the author of wornoutgrandmaporn.com. I love that site!

A bit OT, but since we are on the topic of icon sets: does anybody have suggestions for game icons, for example for a fantasy game (little monsters and stuff)? I am only aware of the Angband ones, because pmog uses them. They are cute, but some alternatives would be nice.

Space ships would also be interesting.

Have you tried iconbuffet.com? There's free sets with both monsters and space ships in.

The Creative Commons license that the Fugue icon set is under says, "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor," yet none is specified.

In addition, purchasing a license for the Fugue set is listed at $50/user. How does this work in terms of web apps?

Excellent!

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