Calling all Web 2.0 Icon designers

We’ve had this idea at The Yellow Llama for the longest time and finally last week we got our ass in gear and partnered up with @Norri from Maxiware to build a site that we’re hoping is going to have great appeal.

There are a couple good free icon websites that many designers use when putting together designs for various applications, IconFinder.net and IconArchive.com being a couple.

However the problem with these sites in our opinion, is that they’re owner run. This means that any new icons only come when the owner decides to upload new ones. The latter of the 2 above mentioned sites at least allows you to ‘submit icons’, but even then it’s still owner approved and there’s no real recognition system in place to give the designers their well deserved kudos.

So basically, between last Thursday and today, Norio and I have slaved to get our new site up & running. The site features, among other things:

Designers upload all the icons
Designers manage a profile that includes their licensing information and links to their websites and social sites (Facebook, Twitter etc)
Designers, if they have an Adsense account, can enter their publisher ID, and will earn 50% of clicks made on Adsense units that are shown on their icons’ pages.
Icons are tagged for easy searching and categorization
The designer uploads a 128×128 PNG icon, that is automatically resized to 64, 48, 32, 22 and 16×16 icons
Each icon displays the designers information and the designers profile page includes a list of all the icons he’s ever uploaded.

We have many awesome ideas for future developments and additions to the site, some of which include:

user can “favorite” icons and then have a page that displays his favorite icons
advanced search: filter by user, filter by size etc
subcribe to a newsletter that will mail out a weekly digest of newly added icons

Currently the site is still being ironed out, but we’re eagerly looking for some icon designers to come on board and get some icons uploaded to test out the system & give us some feedback on how we can make it better for designers & users alike.

Icon designers who’re keen to get on board and start uploading icons can contact me at markbloomfield at gmail dot com for more information.

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coda

Excellent idea Mark, I use Iconfinder quite often but with little success, so there is potential for something much better.

Just a thought: AFAIK, icons aren’t just designed at one size and then automatically downscaled, but are created individually and then packaged, so consider allowing for that. Perhaps icon designers upload a zip file of the different sized icons and the system or an administrator takes care of the rest.

Chris M

I also use Icon Finder these days, but love your idea! @coda – I think I’ve read something along those lines before as well :)

MarkB

@coda – ah so you mean that we could allow for designers to upload those specific sizes themselves, but failing which (or if they miss out any sizes), then our script takes over and fills in the blanks? that could work ya… will keep it in mind :) thanks!