Free Design Tools: Icons

I’ve been in a bit of a Photoshop mood the past two or three days. I don’t really remember how long anymore because when I’m doing that kind of stuff, time goes by pretty fast. Good stuff. Anyway, I’ve managed to work on these areas of my site: http://connect.415vince.com and http://www.415vince.com . Whole new color and redesign. It’s like a lifestyle change. Changing the colors and changing my outlook on life. How bout that hm? Everything now matches and it’s a lot easier to manage with Joomla, instead of hand editing all of those HTML files. I even changed the background of my Twitter, so that it’ll match all the other parts of the site. If you’re wondering where I got all those awesome social network icons and RSS feed icons and what not, I’ve compiled a list of a couple sources. I’d love to share them all with you so you can use them for your inspirational design works and what not. Put them to good use. Alright, here we go…and oh yeah, make sure you visit Deviantart too, for their selection of awesome .psd, .jpg, and .gif .

1) Smashingmagazine: Are you a designer? Inspiring designer? Not a designer at all, but still like to mess around and personalize your space on the cyberweb? If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, then you need to make sure you visit Smashingmagazine as soon as possible and as frequently as possible. I only just stumbled across the site when I was searching for “social network icons” in Google. Now I’ve added it to Google Reader, so I can keep track of any tips and freebies. I’ve only seen a couple of their posts, but they offer free fonts, icon sets, web icons, web template designs, and tutorials. It’s awesome. That’s why it’s at the top of my list.

2) Divageekdesigns: Also stumbled up on this site from all that Googling. Awesome site. Not only is it full of freebies like icons and Wordpress themes, there are tons of posts with free templates. It’s a designer’s dream, even though I don’t claim to be one, although I am a little bit of a Photoshop enthuz, I would say. Make sure you check this resource out. You don’t want to miss it.

3) FreeIconsWeb: Hopefully you know what this site offers just by looking at the name. If not, let me tell you plain and simple: tons of FREE ICONS! Need a specigic theme? Well you got it. With pages and pages of wonderful icons that will float everybody’s boat, this has got to be one of the top sites you’ll find on any search engine. If I wanted to do a complete operating system makeover and swap out all of my icons, I would definitely pay this site a visit. They’re pretty unique too, like their collection of transport icons, cloth dolls, and even chess emoticons. Weird? No! AWESOME.

4) Iconeden: My oh my, they have wonderful icons. Although they’re in the business of providing affordable icons to those who need them: especially for professional developments and websites. However, if you’re not a part of their exclusive club, you can still get some pretty awesome icons for free from them. Trust me, they’re good. I’m in the habit of downloading all the icons that I think I might use in the future and save them all in my “icons” folder.

5) VeryIcon: Ready for an awesome search engine for icons? This is the one. Most awesome one that I’ve run across so far. With hundreds of SETS of icons, you’ll pretty much run across something you like. I have no complaints. You can either search for the icons using the search engine or browse by category. I recommend the latter. You never know when you’ll miss something. A must visit. If you have any other suggestions for free icons, templates, .psd’s, tutorials, or such, please leave a link and your recommendation in the comments. I’m sure there are tons more. I’m just posting the ones I’ve run across in the past day or so. Cheers.

• Blogupp
• Hell's Kitchen, 11 Chefs Compete
• Music Playlist for the Week of March 16, 2009