50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design

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Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing, he’s most probably running front-end & UX … More about Vitaly ↬

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Round-ups of beautiful and useful icons are almost legendary here, on Smashing Magazine. While some readers complain about the annoying “list”-style of some of our articles, we are confident that useful round-ups of relevant resources are very valuable and useful for designers. This is why over months we collect useful links and then present them in posts in the magazine. Like it or hate it, but the feedback that we get from the design community when we publish such posts is mostly positive which is why we keep doing it.

This round-up covers 50 beautiful and useful icons that may turn out to be life-savers for your next design. We present photorealistic icons, mini icons and pictograms, symbols and signs, free templates as well as Christmas icon sets and desktop replacement icons. Please make sure to read the license agreements before using the icons – they may change from time to time. Did you find this post useful? Would you like to see more similar posts in the future? Let us know in the comments to this post!

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Free High Quality Icons

iMod 146 freely available PNG-icons in the resolutions 256×256px and 512×512px.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - iMod for Dock

Gifts boxes (Registration required) 9 various gift icons in the resolution 256×256px, .PNG. Free for private use; for commercial use a link to the designers’ site is required.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Gifts

Musicons Icon Set (Registration required) A set of 8 music-related icons. Available in the resolutions 256×256, 128×128, 48×48, 32×32, 16×16 as png, .ico, .hqx and .icns. Free for private use; for commercial use a link to the designers’ site is required.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Musicons Icon Set

Gamble icons

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Gamble icons

PixelShop Icon Remake of Pixelmator icon in three different variations for Photoshop (or any other application).

Free High Quality Icon Sets - PixelShop Icon

Free Portfolio Icon Set A set of 5 icons with portfolio sites in mind. The set includes PNG files of 512 pixels and 256 pixels, plus the source files (Illustrator). The icons are free for use in both personal and commercial projects.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Free Portfolio Icon Set Designed

MacBook

Free High Quality Icon Sets - MacBook

Pre Desktop Goodie They’re not amazingly detailed or even polished at their maximum size of 512 pixels, but that wasnít my intention, either. Consider that a disclaimer before you start commenting that they donít look nice enough to you at that size ;).

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Cocoia Blog

STACKS

Free High Quality Icon Sets - STACKS

Sketchy Icons …I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I’ve recently bought a tablet, and it turned out that my hand isn’t listening as it used to. So I’ve been doing this for practice. I designed some of the icons, modified some and just redraw the ones that i found pleasing. These are all the Icons I use at the moment, so if you want some other icons, just let me know.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Sketchy Icons

iWork.com

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Cocoia Blog

Icons by Chris Williams Various icons designed by Chris Williams and available for free download. Among them is this Jack Daniels icon in .ico and .icontainer.

Free High Quality Icon Sets -

Exclusive Free LBOI Icon Set For Designers A little while back Iconshock contacted me and offered to do an exclusive icon set for LBOIís readers. So I set off to browse their website and their work. They do some amazing work in the icon industry. Their website boasts of 803824 unique icons in 232 categories. That is pretty impressive in itself. What I really liked was their active design community and blog where they offered significant number of free high quality icons for downloads every week, featured interesting articles about design and icons and showcased great designer talent. Go check out IconShock ís royalty free icons and custom icon design services.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Exclusive Free LBOI Icon Set For Designers

Stock icons

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Stock icons

Graphic River Webset Icons Designed by Turbomilk, this set contains various social media icons that are available for free personal and commercial use. However, you must link back to the release page if using these icons in a commercial project. Available as .png in the resolutions 16×16px – 48×48px.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Free Set of 25 Icons

Kal Michael’s Icons Various icons in various resolutions, designed by Kal Michael, available for free download and use.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - iCon Design

178 Amazing Web Design Icon The WooFunction Icon Set includes 178 amazing web-related icons in a sophisticated and glossy design style. All 178 icons are available as 32?32 pixel PNG files and we can assure you that they are indeed pixel-perfect. If you have an in-depth look at the individual icons, youíll notice that Liam has spent a lot of time paying attention to the finer details, which means that this is a really classy icon set. Here; have a look for yourself:

Free High Quality Icon Sets - 178 Amazing Web Design Icon

Gentle Romantic icons This set contains 5 .png-icons in the resolution 512×512px. The icons are tiara on royal pillow, rose, champagne glasses (looks good on black and white background), heart with ribbon, Tiffany key.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Gentle Romantic icons

Hand-Drawn Social Media Icon The set comprising of 24 different icons, should cover most of the social networks that you frequent regularly and the default icon size has been set at 64 x 64 pixels.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Hand-Drawn Social Media Icon

Soda Pop Caps Icons Together with the obvious Coca Cola, Fanta, Sprite and Pepsi caps (including Pepsiís horrible redesign), the set features Vita Cola, a Coca Cola knockoff created in Eastern Germany in the mid-Fifties under the Communist regime.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Soda Pop Caps Icons

Jacal’s Castle (Win) This castle icon is available as .ico and .icontainer. Free for personal use, free for public use with a link to the designer’s site. Mac-version.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Castle

Jacintosh (Win) This castle icon is available as .ico. Free for personal use, free for public use with a link to the designer’s site. Only Win-version is available.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Jacintosh

Designer’s tools icon - WD2

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Designer's tools icon - WD2

Shopping bag icon - WD1 This time it’s only one png icon, but it have 3 colors of ribbon handle and 5 sizes. I decided to do new icon series but this collection is called “weekly delicious”, which means will be new icon every week, so here is №1 - shopping bag, it’s easy in photoshop to change colors of ribbons so shopping bag will fit in your design. Add logo or company style graphic elements on it and it will fit anywhere

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Shopping bag icon - WD1

Switch icon

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Switch icon

Hrvoje Bielen’s Icons Various icons, designed by Hrvoje Bielen: crankset icon, propeller engine, jet engine turbine, aircraft, Twitter egg, Gibson Les Paul Guitar and othes. Resolutions: 16×16px — 512×512px, .ico, .png, .tif, .icns.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Propeller Engine icon

Cute Blogging Icon Set This set contains 10 freely available icons. You can use these icons on your blog. Cute Blogging Icon Set inclides Design, Download, Freelance, Part-time, Hire Me, Not Available, About Me, Services, My Blog, Contact.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Cute Blogging Icon Set

Sketchy Web Icons: 30 Hand Drawn Icon Pack This Icon Pack includes 30 Hand-Drawn Web Design Icons. This is the perfect set for adding that handmade feel to your own creations online.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Sketchy Web Icons: 30 Hand Drawn Icon Pack

Mini Social Networking Icon set This set includes 45 social networking Icons: Blogger / Blogspot, Delicious, Digg, Designmoo, Facebook, Design float, Linkedin, Mixx, Myspace, RSS, Technorati, Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo, Windows, Openid, Orkut, Skype, DeviantArt, FriendFeed and many more. Dimensions: 32×32px and 64×64px; .PNG icons.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Gorgeous Mini Social Networking Icon set

Extreme Grunge Garments Icons This high quality, hand made, icon pack is full with 9 Extreme Grunge Social Media Garments. Each icon is in .png format with transparent backgrounds, sized at 256×256px.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Extreme Grunge Garments Icons

Videobox This is the app icon for Videobox, the successor of FLVR.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Videobox

Breakfast Icons Featuring a genuine Moka Express coffee maker, coffee cup, chocolate chip muffin, toast and sugar pot in three versions: open empty, open full and closedóuse it as a trash can replacement!

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Breakfast Icons

Classic Cameras (PNG) A set of camera icons in the resolution 128×128px. Versions: Win version (ico), Mac Version.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Classic Cameras Mac Version

Moleskine Helvetica Icon

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Moleskine Helvetica Icon

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Moleskine Helvetica Icon - R

Generic Controller 2 Another generic controller icon, based on the PlayStation controller. Also with a folder this time.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Generic Controller 2

Capsule The inspiration comes from comic book : “ DragonBall ” , capsule is an amazing stuff in this book.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Capsule

Photoshop Icon Goodie A quick replacement icon for Photoshop. Free for personal use and customization only.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Photoshop Icon Goodie

Usercenter Calendar

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Usercenter Calendar

Sixpack status icon pack Sixpack status is a small set of high quality icons which can be used for status messages. It is completely free for personal and commercial use. Icons are available in four sizes, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128 and 256x256px. They are also available in vector (SVG) format, which can be edited using applications such as Inkscape (they are actually made in Inkscape).

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Sixpack status - free icon pack

Free E-Commerce Icons 10 e-Commerce icons, available as the Adobe Illustrator source file (.ai). They may be used in any projects, whether commercial or private nature.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Freebie des Monats: 10 hochwertige, exklusive E-Commerce Icons

Gaming Icon Set A set of 21 free gaming icons for you to use in any projects, on your application dock, desktop or whatever you like.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Gaming Icon Set

Voodoo Folder Icon Set Voodoo system folder icon. Dock and Wallpaper included. Including sizes: 16×16px — 512×512px. Available in .png, .icns, .ico and iContainer.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Julien Sagot

folios 8 Adobe desktop replacement icons; .png in resolutions 16×16px — 256×256px.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - folios

Pictograms, Symbols and Mini-icons

Freshpixel.fr Freely available icons in vector format by French designer Mister Size. Released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Packs de ressources vectorielles

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Packs de ressources vectorielles

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Packs de ressources vectorielles

DesignWorkPlan This is a collection of 50 common used signage symbols, professional designed. The symbols signs are free of charge available as an OpenType font format, allowing you to easily add symbols & icons to your sign and wayfinding design. All the symbols have been designed & created by Sander Baumann and set to the proportions of a regular typeface, so you no longer need to copy/paste the symbols into your designs.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - DesignWorkPlan

125 Public Information Symbols This Japanese website made a collectio of public information symbols available for free download. The available formats are PDF, EPS and GIF. The set contains symbols of public facilities, transport facilities, commercial facilities, tourism, culture, sport facilities, safety, prohibition, warning and mandatory.

Free High Quality Icon Sets -

brsev 128 unique icons for apps, folders, settings, and the desktop. Each icon has two color variants, dark and light. Each color variant is available as a 128x128 PNG or a Windows ICO. The ICO combines 16x16, 32x32, and 256x256 resolutions; each icon was carefully tweaked in shape and style for the best display quality at the three resolutions listed.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - brsev

Android Icons All icons are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. Feel free to use them in any form in you projects or even remix them. No need to link back to this page, but it would be nice.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Android Icons

149 Icons of Scary Celebrity 149 icons of horror and fantasy gridded up on large sheet and served up on a wall. Chop Shopís The Horror & Fantasy Collection screened print featuring 62 monsters, 35 vampires and 51 various icons of the undead all referenced from various sources of film, television, gaming, music, literature, legend and more. Perfect for taking to work, and killing productivity for an entire day.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - 149 Icons of Scary Celebrity

Cafeteria Vector Icons These are vector pictograms rather than icons but all the more useful for that. You can scale them to any size, change their colors and mess with them any way you want.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Cafeteria Vector Icons

google-maps-icons Map icons collection is a pack of 600 free icons for your placemarks. You can put them manually in your Google Maps with the “My maps” feature, or automaticly with the Google Maps API.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - google-maps-icons

172 Country Flag Icons 172 final country flag icons which rendered at 256×256, 128×128, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 16×16 pixels and formats are png, ico and icns. License: Free for non-commercial use.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - 172 final flag icons

United States Flags Icons American states Icon set which rendered at 256×256, 128×128, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 16×16 pixels and format are png, ico and icns. License: Free for non-commercial use.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - 172 final flag icons

Fun A set of small 16×16px icons: Wacom tablet, Dresser, iPhone, iMac, Dresser.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Fun

Mini Icon Set A set of various mini icons: included sizes are 48px, 32px and 16px.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Mini Icon Set

Christmas Icons and Vectors

Classic Cameras (PNG) A set of camera icons in the resolution 128×128px. Versions: Win version (ico), Mac Version.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Classic Cameras Mac Version

Moleskine Helvetica Icon

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Moleskine Helvetica Icon

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Moleskine Helvetica Icon - R

Generic Controller 2 Another generic controller icon, based on the PlayStation controller. Also with a folder this time.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Generic Controller 2

Capsule The inspiration comes from comic book : “ DragonBall ” , capsule is an amazing stuff in this book.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Capsule

Photoshop Icon Goodie A quick replacement icon for Photoshop. Free for personal use and customization only.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Photoshop Icon Goodie

Usercenter Calendar

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Usercenter Calendar

Sixpack status icon pack Sixpack status is a small set of high quality icons which can be used for status messages. It is completely free for personal and commercial use. Icons are available in four sizes, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128 and 256x256px. They are also available in vector (SVG) format, which can be edited using applications such as Inkscape (they are actually made in Inkscape).

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Sixpack status - free icon pack

Free E-Commerce Icons 10 e-Commerce icons, available as the Adobe Illustrator source file (.ai). They may be used in any projects, whether commercial or private nature.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Freebie des Monats: 10 hochwertige, exklusive E-Commerce Icons

Gaming Icon Set A set of 21 free gaming icons for you to use in any projects, on your application dock, desktop or whatever you like.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Gaming Icon Set

Voodoo Folder Icon Set Voodoo system folder icon. Dock and Wallpaper included. Including sizes: 16×16px — 512×512px. Available in .png, .icns, .ico and iContainer.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Julien Sagot

folios 8 Adobe desktop replacement icons; .png in resolutions 16×16px — 256×256px.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - folios

Pictograms, Symbols and Mini-icons

Freshpixel.fr Freely available icons in vector format by French designer Mister Size. Released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Packs de ressources vectorielles

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Packs de ressources vectorielles

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Packs de ressources vectorielles

DesignWorkPlan This is a collection of 50 common used signage symbols, professional designed. The symbols signs are free of charge available as an OpenType font format, allowing you to easily add symbols & icons to your sign and wayfinding design. All the symbols have been designed & created by Sander Baumann and set to the proportions of a regular typeface, so you no longer need to copy/paste the symbols into your designs.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - DesignWorkPlan

125 Public Information Symbols This Japanese website made a collectio of public information symbols available for free download. The available formats are PDF, EPS and GIF. The set contains symbols of public facilities, transport facilities, commercial facilities, tourism, culture, sport facilities, safety, prohibition, warning and mandatory.

Free High Quality Icon Sets -

brsev 128 unique icons for apps, folders, settings, and the desktop. Each icon has two color variants, dark and light. Each color variant is available as a 128x128 PNG or a Windows ICO. The ICO combines 16x16, 32x32, and 256x256 resolutions; each icon was carefully tweaked in shape and style for the best display quality at the three resolutions listed.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - brsev

Android Icons All icons are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. Feel free to use them in any form in you projects or even remix them. No need to link back to this page, but it would be nice.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Android Icons

149 Icons of Scary Celebrity 149 icons of horror and fantasy gridded up on large sheet and served up on a wall. Chop Shopís The Horror & Fantasy Collection screened print featuring 62 monsters, 35 vampires and 51 various icons of the undead all referenced from various sources of film, television, gaming, music, literature, legend and more. Perfect for taking to work, and killing productivity for an entire day.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - 149 Icons of Scary Celebrity

Cafeteria Vector Icons These are vector pictograms rather than icons but all the more useful for that. You can scale them to any size, change their colors and mess with them any way you want.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Cafeteria Vector Icons

google-maps-icons Map icons collection is a pack of 600 free icons for your placemarks. You can put them manually in your Google Maps with the “My maps” feature, or automaticly with the Google Maps API.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - google-maps-icons

172 Country Flag Icons 172 final country flag icons which rendered at 256×256, 128×128, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 16×16 pixels and formats are png, ico and icns. License: Free for non-commercial use.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - 172 final flag icons

United States Flags Icons American states Icon set which rendered at 256×256, 128×128, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 16×16 pixels and format are png, ico and icns. License: Free for non-commercial use.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - 172 final flag icons

Fun A set of small 16×16px icons: Wacom tablet, Dresser, iPhone, iMac, Dresser.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Fun

Mini Icon Set A set of various mini icons: included sizes are 48px, 32px and 16px.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Mini Icon Set

Christmas Icons and Vectors

Silent Night Christmas icons

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Silent Night Christmas icons by LazyCrazy on deviantART

Smashing Christmas Icon Set

Smashing Christmas Icon Set

Free Christmas Photoshop Pack Need to decorate your website or banner with Christmas elements? Vladstudio Christmas Photoshop Pack will help!

Free High Quality Icon Sets -

Santa Claus Icons

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Santa Claus Icons

The Real Christmas ë05 Reloaded As a christmas Gift from Enhanced Labs, We decided to Add 7 Bonus Icons to the package, and Re-Release this icon set on christmas day. This icon set now includes 20 holiday icons.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - The Real Christmas ë05 Reloaded

Christmas Icons

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Christmas Icons

Christmas Icons Archigraphs Christmas icons Icons Set created for free use. For MacOs X, and Windows Vista. PNG files included.

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Christmas Icons

Xmas 2009 Icon Set

Free High Quality Icon Sets - Xmas 2009 Icon Set