Icons: Tiny elements of good design

If there ever is a reality show about multimedia journalism (Who Wants Be A Multimedia Producer? Project Multimedia?) one of the challenges has to be creating an icon. One of the hardest things to do as a multimedia designer is to create a set of icons for use on a newspaper site. It's relatively easy to create vast multimedia projects when you've got a great canvas to start with but creating something in a 16 pixel wide space, dot by dot, is excruciating. An icon must be universally recognizable and eye-catching, something that is very hard to do.

Intersmash provides a little bit of inspiration with their collection of icons that designate things like comments, mail and shopping. Iconfinder has an intuitive search function that allows anyone to download and use a variety of icons under Creative Commons and other licenses. The icons range in size from 12x12 to 128x128 px.


If you become overwhelmed with frustration during your icon selection, try iStockPhoto which has a large collection of vector icons that come in batches and can be downloaded immediately.

Labels: design, site management