
Noun Project – Icons for Everything - vikingcaffiene
https://thenounproject.com/
======
felixthehat
I put up a couple of hundred icons that I'd drawn previously up with a public
domain license. Here are the download counts and royalties from the last 10
months for reference:
[http://i.imgur.com/clNZWUk.png](http://i.imgur.com/clNZWUk.png)

~~~
tinbad
Are you saying creating and sharing icon sets is not a get-rich-quick-scheme?
;)

~~~
felixthehat
Ah the halcyon days of September last year when I made nearly $40.

Still, it's free beer money, and a good enough way to distribute work to the
public domain.

It feels good as a designer who's not able to easily contribute to the open
source community.

~~~
Raphmedia
> It feels good as a designer who's not able to easily contribute to the open
> source community.

You would be surprised how helpful it is to simply offer design insights for
free. A lot of projects are maintainted by programmers who have zero design
notions and who are not even aware of the little things.

Offering a free mockup to an open-source project is also very valuable.

~~~
felixthehat
I've tried with mixed results. Some OS projects have been super grateful for
tiny things such as favicons and logo vectorisation, but in my experience most
tend to acknowledge but not implement work sent on spec.

After a quick search I've just discovered opensourcedesign.net which I'll
definitely look at contributing to. This would be great for designers
portfolios
[http://opensourcedesign.net/jobs](http://opensourcedesign.net/jobs)

~~~
zubat
It's a tough nut to crack. Open source contributors tend to want to dive in
and make the one patch they want without engaging in any design or feedback
process. Installing that process means someone has to take up managerial
duties. Most projects stumble along with a "one coder army" who expedites
these processes by assuming anything they can't do on their lonesome is out of
scope, and all feedback, patches or design ideas are strictly suggestion.
Switching to a team management approach when a project gets big is a big
source of friction since it's rare to have a strong solo dev who is equally
capable at giving up direct control and delegating. Usage of a project is
often mismatched with development energy, creating unbalanced workloads.

So the tendency ends up being that a lot of projects just stay small and go
out of their way not to grow, even when they address a problem that demands
more scope than they have.

My suggestion given all of that is to not give up, but focus your design
energies on the inspirational: if you produce mockups and prototypes that are
hugely compelling, someone will come out of the woodwork to realize some of
them: you may not know which ones or when, but you're giving them footholds in
approaching the problem.

~~~
felixthehat
Yes, I've not tried submitting pull requests or forking code so I don't have
any experience of the etiquette or protocols needed like developers must have
in spades.

Very interesting point about inspirational mockups, definitely food for
thought!

------
everyone
Little pictograms for buttons are often extremely vague and open to
interpretation.

Eg. Heres a random game where upon opening it I was immediately confused
[http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/apk/images/color-
switch_1.jp...](http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/apk/images/color-switch_1.jpg)
(also the icons are all animated / rotating, making it even more confusing,
made this game menu stick out in my memory as an egregious example)

Some designers seems to love the minimalism of if though, from an aesthetic
reason, I assume.

Imo Text is the clearest thing you can put on a button to tell the user what
that button does 'save' 'load' 'new game' etc. Yes, it will need to be
translated, but thats simply putting in more work for a better product.

~~~
yoz-y
That really depends. Can you imagine photoshop's interface if it were all
text? This is an extreme example but more generally I think text is better for
discoverability but icons are better for visual memory and thus better suited
for buttons in applications you use often.

On desktop there are always tool tips. On touch interfaces this was not yet
figured out.

~~~
jv22222
I did a workup of the iphone with no icons and just text:

[http://justinvincent.com/page/2387/if-the-iphone-used-
text-l...](http://justinvincent.com/page/2387/if-the-iphone-used-text-labels-
instead-of-icons)

It shows just how stark an interface can look without them.

~~~
biot
As a counterpoint, here are Zendesk's icons with no text:
[http://imgur.com/a/wzCO0](http://imgur.com/a/wzCO0) \-- can you guess what
those do?

Of course, this is about the worst example of iconography I've ever seen so
here's the same with the labels left in:
[http://imgur.com/a/CyqA6](http://imgur.com/a/CyqA6) and I'd even go so far as
to suggest that given their choice of icons they should just get rid of them
and make it text-only.

~~~
mediumdeviation
But those are product logo, not icons
[https://imgur.com/a/4kAKt](https://imgur.com/a/4kAKt). They don't serve the
same purpose - logos are brand assets and are suppose to be distinct,
otherwise they can't be trademarked.

------
jtraffic
They also have a cool API:
[http://api.thenounproject.com/](http://api.thenounproject.com/), which is
used by automated logo services logojoy[0] and Tailor Brands[1].

I think Google's autodraw[2] + noun project would make an excellent pairing.

[0] [https://www.logojoy.com/](https://www.logojoy.com/) [1]
[https://www.tailorbrands.com/](https://www.tailorbrands.com/) [2]
[https://aiexperiments.withgoogle.com/autodraw](https://aiexperiments.withgoogle.com/autodraw)

~~~
Cymen
API also used by Teespring.

------
wtvanhest
This has been around for years. I was thankful for them when I was building my
now failed company. I didn't end up licensing anything, but had I got to
revenue, I certainly would have. Thank you to your team.

------
eddyg
Previously, for ref:

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2843728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2843728)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3498929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3498929)

------
Jdam
Nice service but HUGE WARNING: Do not sign up to E-Mails, as they are super-
spammy.

------
xs
I think $40/yr or $2/icon is too far out of reach for me to use these icons as
a proof of concept, blog, or early website launches. I have a website idea
which would use about 100 of these icons, but I can't justify the cost yet
since it brings in no revenue.

~~~
andruby
$40/yr isn't that expensive for "artwork". Domain names and hosting can be
more expensive.

Hiring a graphical artist for an hour will probably be a lot more expensive

~~~
woodrowbarlow
hiring a graphic designer usually means you get exclusive rights to their
output, which is a tremendous difference.

~~~
manmal
But who needs exclusivity for proof of concepts?

------
sosodaft
TOS acceptance box and "you can send me emails" box combined. Classy.

All I wanted was a bacon egg and cheese icon...

~~~
desdiv
The icons are embedded SVG so you can just copy and paste it from the page
source. The icons are Creative Commons licensed so you don't even need to
accept their TOS.

------
freekh
This really reminds my of the glory days of clip art :) I for one really liked
those so no harm meant :) The next thing is clippy coming back (oh wait that's
all those chat bots) :)

~~~
wlfmn
Getting hit with the nostalgia of flipping through a giant book and locating
the corresponding disc with the icon I wanted!

------
Phlow
What I really need is a quality Verb Project

~~~
laser
What are you thinking? They call it the Noun Project, but they seem to cover
verbs pretty well from the few examples I tried.

Ex. "Bat"
[https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=bat&i=660766](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=bat&i=660766)

"Swim"
[https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=swim&i=912051](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=swim&i=912051)

"Eat"
[https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=eat&i=946933](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=eat&i=946933)

------
WalterBright
There are about a million words in the English language. The site has a long
way to go to get to "everything". Me, I'll stick with phonetic alphabets,
which have long displaced icons.

Interestingly, iconic languages usually wound up assigning sounds to the icons
and were transformed into phonetic alphabets. Icons just aren't practical.

~~~
iamcurious
Of course not. ;)

------
apo
Valuable resource with many uses beyond putting icons on buttons. For example:

\- source graphics for figures in books and articles

\- inspiration for new ways of expressing an idea graphically

\- gauging variation in visual representation of a concept

\- learning how to make a particular shape with vector graphics

\- logo ideas

~~~
panic
Not to mention points of interest on maps!

------
STRiDEX
I read some designers discussing the filter icon usually being a funnel which
doesn't do much filtering. It does funnel something into something.
[https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=filter](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=filter)
interesting to see the other options that show up.

~~~
wyager
Here's an idea; four arrows moving right, towards a line. The line has a hole
in it, only allowing one of the arrows to pass through. Demonstrates filtering
and doesn't have any accidental significance from symmetry.

~~~
ovao
There's a somewhat more simplistic version of that on the above-linked
results, which is four centered, horizontal lines, each decreasing in width
from top to bottom, which I think communicates basically the right idea: you
have a much of this thing up here, but you can get less of that thing down
here by clicking this (maybe). Conceptually speaking I like it more than a
funnel, but it still needs a text label to convey the right thing.

There's also a literal filter icon, which could only ever work at somewhat
larger sizes due to the mesh. Without knowing that the context of the search
results is that of "filter", however, you probably wouldn't know what it was
by simply looking at it.

------
bbcbasic
They even have icons for "Fuck", e.g.

[https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Fuck&i=54850](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=Fuck&i=54850)

Iconic karma sutra here:

[https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/](https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/)

~~~
tomcam
Which mysteriously includes icons like this one:
[https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/164447/](https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/164447/)

------
rch
I can certainly see how this is useful, but is there also a complementary site
that provides the opposite? I try to avoid using icons that resemble everyday
items (the 3.5 inch floppy for 'save' is a good example).

Edit: there's actually a ton of good abstract stuff in here. Should have
looked more closely.

------
dvcc
Cool, but I can't see the footer when infinite scroll is enabled to check the
pricing when viewing an icon.

~~~
criddell
What's the point of having a footer when you can't get to it? I see links for
about and pricing that I wanted to click on, but I can't get to it. Super
frustrating.

------
tlogan
I would be using this service if they offer all possible resolutions with one
click. I assume this is service which should be used by non-designers to
quickly get icons for some proof of concept or similar.

Am I missing something?

~~~
prh8
You can download SVG versions of the icons.

------
qznc
I always look for the icons with multiple gears. Have not found one which
would actually work: Gears not touching, size difference blocks, or three
gears in deadlock. :)

~~~
felixthehat
Hey only one of my gear icons wouldn't work :)

[https://thenounproject.com/blackspike/collection/gears/](https://thenounproject.com/blackspike/collection/gears/)

~~~
qznc
Great work! :)

------
deevolution
It would be nice if they implemented machine learning to cluster icons with
similar style together. Then your queries could return only icons in the stlye
youve selected!

------
Animats
Don't submit them to the Unicode Consortium. Please. Do not want.

There are now over 2600 emoji. Enough already.

~~~
cooper12
The point of modern emoji is that their look is standardized though. (past the
original goal of Japanese cell phone communication, the consortium seems to be
concerned with filling in gaps and making sure cultures are properly
represented) So emoji should (ideally) be a common set of pictograms that
people can send to each other and which can be displayed interchangeable by
each IME. The Unicode Consortium also has more stringent standards for
inclusion. [0] UI icons are excluded. 2.6K isn't a lot, [1] Unicode has tons
of room, and no one is forcing you to use them. People have obviously found
use for them and it has made them enthusiastic about interacting with their
tech overlords. [2] I used to irrationally hate anything popular too, until I
made an effort to try to understands people's motivations for liking it and
tried it myself. Emoji are the missing expressive layer of our text that
express nuance like sarcasm and mirth. Sure we have emoticons, but those were
limited and emoji are much more diverse and versatile. [3] Maybe you should
give them a try before being so quick to write them off. I don't exactly
pepper my texts with them, but I do respect people's motivations for using
them and I always make sure to send a popper [4] to my friends on their
birthdays.

[0]:
[http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html](http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html)

[1]: Just look at how many Chinese characters there are...

[2]: Campaigns to get certain emoji into unicode are quite popular, such as
with the taco emoji
([https://www.tacobell.com/feed/tacoemoji](https://www.tacobell.com/feed/tacoemoji))
and the dumping emoji
([http://www.dumplingemoji.org/](http://www.dumplingemoji.org/)).

[3]: Eggplant emoji anyone?

[4]: [http://emojipedia.org/party-popper/](http://emojipedia.org/party-
popper/)

------
blauditore
Searched for "anything" \- got asked:

    
    
      Did you mean “anyhting”?
    

I wonder what's going on there...

~~~
amichal
Guess: a) their misspelling dictionary is populated with past searches instead
on english seed directory without taking into account if they found anything.
and b) folks typed "anyhting" more often (maybe even just once) then
"anything"

------
tmaly
This is awesome, I was actually just looking for a set of food icons I could
purchase for my side project.

------
Steeeve
How does this work when you purchase a royalty free license and then use it in
an open source project?

~~~
chadpaulson
I always credit the artists, as well as the Noun Project itself, in cases like
this. [https://chadpaulson.github.io/react-cassette-
player/](https://chadpaulson.github.io/react-cassette-player/)

------
libeclipse
This site is sick.

I mainly use it for finding nice logos for my github projects, and they really
do not disappoint.

~~~
raarts
'sick' ?

~~~
fiatpandas
From Merriam-Webster dictionary:

"outstandingly or amazingly good or impressive"

------
tinhangliu
I love the Noun Project! It will be amazing to have a plugin to get all their
icons on WordPress

------
tomelders
No icons for 'schadenfreude'? Pffft, stop wasting my time.

~~~
david927
Does that upset you? he he he

~~~
tomelders
You'd like that wouldn't you.

------
em3rgent0rdr
Icon's are the written language of the digital world.

------
swayvil
It was inevitable. We are going to hieroglyphics.

~~~
tjl
That's basically what emoji are. Of course, I have a hard time telling what
they're supposed to mean most of the time.

------
bbcbasic
Airbnb logo

[https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/110996/](https://thenounproject.com/term/sex/110996/)

------
gfody
searched for "save" .. ten pages of variations on the 3.5" diskette icon all
labeled "floppy" even though diskettes aren't floppy. I wonder when a new save
icon will emerge?

~~~
dragonwriter
The "floppy disk" always (even with 5.25" and 8" disks) referred to the disk
inside the casing, not the casing (which wasn't particularly floppy on the
bigger disks, and wasn't a disk on any of them.)

~~~
fenwick67
I always thought it came from the fact that the old 8-inchers were physically
flexible.

~~~
dragonwriter
The storage media was a floppy disk (literally) for all three sizes The casing
was either flexible but not really floppy (for the 8- and 5.25-inch versions)
or rigid (for the 3.5-inch version) and square (not a disk) for all three
versions.

So the only thing that "floppy disk" ever made sense for, even for the 8"
ones, is the storage media inside the casing, not the casing.

------
artur_makly
use them all the time. been around a while though!

------
backpropaganda
Let's go back to 1000 BC, and re-invent Chinese.

~~~
codefined
I can just imagine some over-worked scribe attempting to draw one of the more
complex shapes like:

[https://thenounproject.com/browse/?i=1037952](https://thenounproject.com/browse/?i=1037952)
[https://thenounproject.com/term/keyboard/1018886/](https://thenounproject.com/term/keyboard/1018886/)

I think there was a reason Chinese wasn't based upon the images of the things
they were writing about!

------
WalterBright
Someday, someone will invent this thing called "words" that can be looked up
in a dictionary when you don't know what they mean.

