
The Noun Project: Icons for everything - coderdude
http://thenounproject.com/?hn
======
marknutter
I had an idea for something like this a while back but it had a different
twist: for any given noun or verb, anyone could upload their attempt at making
the most universally recognizable version of that icon. The creator would tag
the icon with descriptive words to help categorize it, with maybe one main
word that it's trying to convey.

To truly discover which icons are the most clear and recognizable for a given
noun, other users would be able to go through the icons one by one and add
what they think each icon means by entering in a few key words. With enough
input from enough users, it would gradually become clear which icons met their
goals and which didn't. These results could be broken down by country and
ethnicity, too. This way, we could really be confident that using an icon
that's supposed to translate to a word will actually translate as it's
supposed to for the maximum number of people.

~~~
kiloaper
That sounds like an awesome way to assist in localisation. By analysing the
results you could have one set of icons for your app for western countries,
another for China etc. It reminds me of the problems planners had in trying to
design airport signs for international visiters in the early days of flying
and the confusion caused by complex signs asking people to wash their hands.
The BBC did a documentary on early UK airports and it featured in it but
fortunately I can't find it.

------
cyanbane
This was one of the first projects I donated to on Kickstarter and one that I
am sooo happy I did. I use it as an example to other web developers when I
mention why I think the Kickstarter model is really the future of creating
_useful things_.

------
citricsquid
I don't like the website, the way that all the icons are listed without any
sort of indication to how far I'm scrolling through the set. Also, icons are
sorted by tags but to find tags I must either search and hope there is a tag
or find a tag via specific icons pages, why is there no directory? Feels like
the focus was look pretty over efficiently store a large collection of icons.
Nice icons though.

~~~
skore
#!/bin/bash

for i in {1..1100}

do

    
    
       wget -q "http://thenounproject.com/site_media/zipped/svg_$i.zip
    

done

~~~
jaryd
need a trailing "

edit: this is also useful

#!/bin/bash

for i in {1..1036}

do

unzip svg_$i.zip;rm svg_$i.zip

done

------
duck
This was on HN five months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2843728>

~~~
Zev
So what? 5 months is a long time, and I bet that they've added a lot of
symbols.

(Also: I've been on HN for a really long time and there are plenty of things
that are months — or years — old that I've forgotten about and wouldn't mind
seeing again.)

~~~
ryanbraganza
Do you think HN would benefit from a bot that reposts 5-month-old resources
where the resource would have updated since then?

I think this would only be valuable when the first post is more of a "show
hn/looking for contributors" and the second is a "this project has come of age
and is valuable for the general population".

Otherwise, if it was valuable then, you would've bookmarked it. If it wasn't,
it shouldn't have been submitted.

------
ericd
These attribution requirements on a _per icon basis_ are a bit much...

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Luckily they have a very good guide on how to attribute[1]. If you are using
them on a site or in an App you can simply put the attributions in your about
page.

[1] [http://blog.thenounproject.com/post/12554806140/the-noun-
pro...](http://blog.thenounproject.com/post/12554806140/the-noun-projects-
attribution-requirements)

~~~
ericd
Thanks for the heads up.

The requirements listed on that page are still kind of silly, though,
especially for a commercial project, where it requires you to list the
attribution right near the use of it. For example: "If your product is listed
online, you must include the proper attribution on the same page next to the
item you are selling. "

That kind of requirement is just begging to be ignored completely.

------
latch
The donate button that goes straight to paypal kinda sucks. Would be nice to
have an in-between page to tell us how donations are used and all that other
goodness. Also, don't I recall considerable problems for non-charities to
collect "donations" via paypal?

~~~
starwed
The problem was soliciting donations with the promise that the funds would be
given to a particular charity/cause. Presumably in the past that has often
been done in a fraudulent manner.

Just asking for money isn't going to have that particular issue... :)

------
sa1f
If you'd like to download PNG instead of SVG, <http://thepngproject.com/> is
quite helpful, with extensions for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

------
andrewcooke
why do they mix symbolic and realistic designs? why are some objects
axonometric / isometric / perspective and others front-on. why are some "old
fashioned" and others modern?

does anyone actually use this? seriously - are there any attractive, well
designed sites as examples? because it seems to me like you need to do a lot
of filtering to get something consistent and appealing.

~~~
narcissus
I think the reason for the mix is that there's more than one 'input set'. I
figured that when I saw the thermometer icon that that was it: the 'canonical
thermometer icon'. However, clicking on it gave me a page of two different
icons.

------
ComputerGuru
Thanks for this. I came across the site back when it first started, and
thought "this would be a promising thing to keep my eye on" - and, in typical
fashion, forgot about it completely thereafter.

It has progressed much and I can think of many uses I would put this to.

------
v33ra
Was curious about how many HTTP requests were used to load all the Icons, but
found that those are not separate 'images', instead SVG is being used to
'draw' them, thus just taking one HTTP request to load a bunch of icons.

Impressive work.

------
lvillani
I found a couple of issues (Chrome 16.0.912.75 on Ubuntu 10.04)

\- When previewing an icon I can't close the lightbox by pressing "Esc". I
have to explicitly click outside the box to close it.

\- I can't seem to be able to view an icon's details page when cookies/local
storage are disabled. I.e.: from the home page, clicking on an icon doesn't
load the details page unless I have cookies/local storage enabled. I can get
there with a direct link though (e.g.:
<http://thenounproject.com/noun/fountain-pen/#icon-No1033>)

Anyway, this is a great project, thanks!

------
joering1
this is great, thanks James. I looked through your other projects as well, all
have very light and appealing graphics. Would you mind saying what tools you
use to pick up colors, templates, etc?

~~~
coderdude
This actually isn't something I made. Just thought it was cool. :)

I use Photoshop 7 for image editing. I look for color inspiration on sites
like cssmania.com and dribbble.com. I've used Adobe Kuler a few times. For
design, gedit or EditPad Pro. The designs are from scratch but inspiration
comes from the sites I mentioned. Sometimes I do rough mockups in Photoshop
before I start writing the layout.

~~~
joering1
thanks. I webdesign little bit by myself. can you point me to javascript you
used for hovers and sliding of icons and that "bubble" effect popping up when
you click for details? its not jQuery I think. i would like to use this
functionality, if this is not copyrighted.

------
dreamdu5t
Perfect example of the amateurization of design.

Projects like this have been started before personal computers, by people with
a deeper degree of dedication and expertise, only be abandoned by future so-
called "disciples" of the same profession. I doubt these people even know who
Henry Dreyfuss is and what he tried to do, or they might bother continuing his
mission.

No, more is not better when what you need is someone who actually knows
something about gestalt, symbology, disabilities, etc. I cringe at the thought
of crowd-sourcing our street signs.

------
masonhensley
Be careful about using some of these icons, a number of them require to
attribution to the author.

------
DanBC
I'm not sure how tagging works.

Search for sad. You get one result {the smilie :( } and you get a tag
category. Clicking the tag cat gives me another result, of a broken heart. I
couldn't see a way of suggesting a tag for the smilie.

------
pyrhho
I like the Noun Project, and I think it's cool, but I doubt its utility at the
moment. For example, they have an icon for 'Kiwi', but none for 'Save'?

Edit: They DO have several for 'Upload' and several different ones for
'Download'.

~~~
skore
I think 'Save' is just infinitely harder to visualize than 'Download'. There
is precisely one meaning of 'Download' (moving data over the internet onto a
device). I could go on and on about how many different meanings 'Save' has
(remember how kids these days don't know what that 'floppy' icon even means?).

------
DanBC
I love the noun project.

Thanks for your careful clarity when describing the Butterfly Effect. (There's
a typo there! "in the sense of providing the energy for the hurrincane,")

Is there anyway of making the licence clearer?

------
hrktb
This is a great project. Just scrolling through the list is refreshing and
delightful.

And suddenly you get cought off guard by things you didn't know it even
existed. Like guerilla gardening.

------
rat87
<http://thenounproject.com/noun/mermaid/#icon-No1011>

Looks more like a woman then a mermaid.

~~~
timClicks
Patches welcome: <http://thenounproject.com/login/?next=/upload/>

------
andrewfelix
Is there anything stopping a user from submitting copyrighted material? ie.
Are the submissions subject to any kind of screening?

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Hopefully they would search on tineye at least before allowing the submission.

------
jasondrowley
I've used icons from TNP in several projects. I really like the designs, and
I'm very surprised someone hasn't submitted it yet.

------
roguecoder
I smell some gender issues: the icon for "Couple" is one step away from adding
a leash and the icon for "Team" is all men...

------
thesash
This really is a great project, and has come a long way in the past year since
or so since I first came across it.

------
alexchamberlain
Shame it's not working on my phone, furthermore it looks like ot is UA
sniffing to tell me to upgrade my browser.

------
electic
Wow. This is such a great project. Thank you for submitting this. This will
really help during web development.

------
maxgaudin
very nice project. congrats on getting so much support from kickstarter:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tnp/building-a-free-
coll...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tnp/building-a-free-collection-
of-our-worlds-visual-sy)

------
artursapek
It was pretty disappointing when I zoomed in and the "Search" magnifying glass
wasn't SVG :)

------
joshmattvander
Love the idea. But can you restore the default behavior for the spacebar?

------
Void_
I've been doing this after coming to the US from Europe.

It works great, but you have to go to bed at 9PM if you want to get some good
sleep. I think the hard part is to keep that habit.

~~~
leviathan
Of course the side effect is that you end up posting your reply to the wrong
article ;)

------
miles_matthias
This is awesome, thanks so much for this!

------
monkkbfr
won't let me download an entire set. I have to do it one. laborious. download.
at. a. time. No thanks.

------
diN0bot
i really like that the site is in german. great study tool. instant mouse over
flash cards.

~~~
maukdaddy
That's a really good point! Many other languages too, including Swedish. Not
too many sites can combine a useful resource as well as studying.

------
atomicdog
Why are they all black and white?

------
agumonkey
Unicon.

------
wavephorm
A lot of them are verbs and adjectives.

~~~
foenix
Exactly. I was looking for their take on "save". Did they stick to a floppy
disk icon?

