Icon Lover

There is definitely no dearth of free social icon sets on the Web. Creating a set of social icons is a good way to get links from blogs, so many designers grabbed this opportunity. The problem is, 90% of these designers stick to just two shapes: a square (in most cases with rounded corners, the iPhone-style) and a circle. There are some very good sets of square and round icons (and I will devote a separate post to them a bit later), but… the same shapes again and again… you know, it’s just boring. Besides, you may want to use something more original to draw the attention of visitors and make them follow you.

On this page you’ll find a list of 9 best social icon sets based on some less commonly used shapes. I didn’t purposely limit the number of sets, but selected only usable, professionally designed icons that look good both on light and dark backgrounds.

The sets are listed in no particular order, you decide yourself which you like better.

Starry Site by Evohosting

16 star-shaped icons with PSD sources.
License: Free, a link to the company website is required.
Click here to read more.. »

On the eve of Eclipse we have released a free set of Twilight Icons for all fans of the Twilight Saga. There are icons for desktop customization (including 256×256 icons for those with Windows 7 and huge screens) and images in BMP and PNG format which are good for blogs and message boards. This time we’ve skipped GIF altogether because Robert Pattinson looks just too dead in 256 colors Enjoy!

Here is a new and completely free icon set in 48×48 pixels size.

48×48 Free Time Icons

Free icon set with a variety of styles for a well-known Delicious symbol.

Large Delicious Icons

Free Large Android Icons collection had been updated recently. Click on the image to see it!

32×32 Music Icon set had also been updated.

DeviantArt has arguably become one of the top sources for free graphics downloads. If you are looking for something contemporary and original DeviantArt is the first place you should look. And they have a lot to offer for iPhone users. Let’s see:

iPhone Style Toolbar Icons
The collection of iPhone icons contains images in sizes of 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, and 16×16 pixels, and supplies several iPhone-specific sizes such as shadowed version of 59×60 pixel images and 57×57 pixel without the shadow. All icons are supplied in 32-bit True Color, and come in normal, disabled, and highlighted states. A variety of file formats is provided, including ICO, PNG, and BMP formats.

BluePrint
This one is our favorite. The pencil-sketch, monochrome style makes this icon set stands out from all the other festive and glossy ones.

Aquaticus
Soft colors, nice gradients and clear analogies make this icon set a perfect example of a high-quality design.

ChokoMilk
A simple, yet very impressive icon set. Black background brings shine to all the bright colors.

iSweet 2.0
If you are looking for some bright colors this icon pack is for you! It has every color of the rainbow in it. In fact, even some colors that did not make it to the rainbow are present.

CMT iPhone Icons
Clean. Crisp. Stylish. What more can you ask?

Submedit
An adorable set of old-fashioned icons. We love the telephone receiver and square compass.

Lush
The girliest, the prettiest, the pinkest set of icons you can find for your iPhone.

Redux SummerBoard
Another stylish icon set. You cannot call it unique, but all the icons are neat and bright colored.

Brazilian
Want to add some spice to your iPhone? This icon set from a Brazilian artist will easily do the job.

Round Theme Icons
A rounded floppy disk can, certainly, look a little weird, but the overall impression is nice.

Your website is in for a complete makeover with these great free icons. Make sure you understand the licensing agreement before you use them, though.

Social 3D Icons for Free

Communication technology has definitely boomed over the last couple of years, and now there are lots of cool 3D icons you can use to keep up. For both commercial and personal use, the standard sizes and the 3D Max versions are on the web for free downloading.

Large Android Icons for Free

Aha-Soft has brought out a whole line of free androids. Just about any space creature or robot is there. All you have to do is go find them.

Large, Free Icons for Business

No longer do you have to do all the hard work of providing icons for your business. These freebies are well-suited to any project and very professional.

Free Desktop Icons for Business

Anything you could possibly want to advertise I there in a number of formats and sizes.

Grungy Aesthetica Sets of Icons

Although it’s not the only one out there, this set of Aesthetica icons is a definite winner. These icons will really animate the right websites and blogs. Best of all, they’re all free, although you can buy commercial licenses, too.

Blocky Creatures

Want some new faces around your website? Check out these four weirdly attractive squares. They come in ICO format in 128-pixel and 48-pixel sizes.

Flavored Icon Sets

These 177 icons will help designers with a number of concepts. They’re available in 48 pixel size.

Project Icon Sets

All kinds of things need icons- bar graphs, calendars, clocks, contacts, mail, etc. These icons come in PBG format and they have vector files for Firefox.

Large, Delicious Icons

The delicious icon in every variation possible- that’s definitely something you might like to incorporate into your website.

The Woo Themes Blog

These 79 256×256 pixel blogger icons are available in both GIF and PNG along with vector files.

Realty Icons

A real estate agency website will look more interesting and garner more popularity with these impossibly realistic icons.

Islamic Icon

Lots of Muslim art and architecture for Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems are found here. Do not use these icons in a way that could be offensive, directly or indirectly.

GP Icons

Here are all those familiar web icons, except now they look earthy and textured. They are in PNG format at 320×320 pixel resolutions.

Handy Icons

Here you’ll find other popular icons in a hand-drawn format- Gmail, Heart icon, Furl, Google, Flickr, Feedburner, FriendFeed, Facebook, Blinklist, Linked IN, Last FM, Newsvine, Magnolia, Paypal, Sphinn, Twitter, Skype, Yahoo, YouTube and Vimeo.

Bag and Box Tele-charger Icon Pack

In PNG and ICO formats, these bags and boxes can be very useful for your webpage.

City Icons

All things city are available here, from hot dog stands to movie tickets. The city can now exist in cyberspace.

Irish Icon Pack

If you like Irish things, even if you aren’t Irish, these are the icons for your blog.

Apple Mail Icons

512×512 pixels in resolution, these stamp icons are attractively old-style.

Construction Icons Vista-Style

With these icons, you make a website that’s still being built look cool. Your visitors will return, even if it’s just to see these icons again.

Vista Aero Pack

Your website should reflect who you are, and if that’s a diehard fan of Vista aero styles then you should get some of these 135 Vista aero icons for your personal use.

Yoritsuki Icons

All 135 of these elegant Japanese-style icons could be yours. “Yoritsuki” refers to a fictional Japanese inn.

Round Icons

All of the major services and applications available on the web are illustrated with these round icons.

Wi-Fun Icons

If your website is more on the playful side, then you might want to look into these fairy-tale-like icons. Otherwise, you’ll just have to have them for fun.

Practika

Everything is no-nonsense and to the point with these icons, which are available in PNG format.

The Leaves Fall

These are all the best-known social networking sites’ logos on leaves with both PNG format and vector sources.

Free Set of Web Applications Icons

These 20 icons are designed for web apps like profile, add, search and delete, and they can be used both for personal ancommercial uses.

V!VA Icons

Cold blue and semi-transparent, these nine icons are formatted in PNG and you can utilize them however you like.

Hydro PRO

Let the designer know how you decided to use them and you can use these twenty-three icons, posted in both PNG and ICO formats, wherever you like.

Metal Chrome Icons

These metallic icons will illustrate the most common web apps. Their resolution is 256×256 pixels.

Twitter Block Icons

It’s time for a new Twitter bird, don’t you think? Everybody has the round one. You can step out of the mainstream with these four cubical birds in resolutions of up to 256×256 pixels.

An absolutely new and free icon pack is released! See it here:

Free 3D Social Icons

Everyone is getting Windows 7, and no one can wait to see what kinds of improvements have been made in system operation, performance and overall style. No doubt it will be a hit. The only concern lies in what webmasters and software developers should be doing right now. Quite simply, they should be making new icons, ones that conform to the Windows 7 look, in order to appear up-to-date.

Icons are the first graphical features of your program or application a potential user will see. The style is basically the same as the one used for Windows Vista, as Microsoft saw how well that one went over. The only difference is that there are some new icons.

Although not well-known, perhaps because of that, icons-windows7.com undertook to collect every one of the new Windows icons and put them up for the public on the internet. They’re now available and you can match your new icons up against them to ensure consistency and an “in the now” look.
You might be wondering how in the world icons-windows7.com could have efficiently harvested all of the windows icons. They used a tool that scanned both DLL libraries and executable files in Windows 7, and then extracted any icons. Then, any duplicates were removed from the results. That left 430 icons, all of which are on the web, downloadable for free. Their sizes are 16×16 pixels, 32×32 pixels, 48×48 pixels, 64×64 pixels and 256×256 pixels, and they come in both the ICO and the PNG formats.
The worst thing you can do for your business is to fall behind current graphic design trends. The first step in guarding yourself against such is to redesign your icons to look like those featured in Windows 7. Start by downloading all 430 for free from icons-windows7.com!