Sites for Free Icons – How to Choose and Use Symbols

Icons are essential in website navigation as they attract visitors’ attention and create necessary logical connections concerning your services. Moreover, they help you emphasize the uniqueness of your business and share its atmosphere and vision. That is why, today, we’d like to show you the most popular sites for free icons and consider how to effortlessly add symbols to your pages. Also, we’ll find out how to choose and use the icons.

Free Website Design Icons and Their Role

Icons are pictures or symbols used as buttons, links, or decorative elements to draw attention to the text(services, or business strengths, for instance). Let’s observe what their role for your site is and whether it’s necessary to think about them:

• it helps improve your brand awareness and make your site special. Thus, it is on an equal basis with logo design, colors, and images;
• convenient user experience and navigation is another advantage of free website design icons. Without an image of a phone, shopping cart, and magnifying glass, it would be more difficult for users to manage an unfamiliar website. These examples consider only the basic things, now imagine how specific icons can make the life of potential clients easier;
• free icons for website make your web design more pleasant and light as in such case you may use less text. You just add an icon with a short description, and that’s enough for visitors to understand what information you want to bring;
• they build easy-to-understand connections so that even those who don’t know the language can comprehend it.

Types of Icons

1. Linear. These are icons that are made up of lines or outlines. Strict and minimalistic images are used both for navigation and in information blocks. Lines can be thin or thick; sometimes, images are filled with color.
2. Illustrations. Instead of thin lines and clear outlines, special color drawings are used. Such pictures make the site colorful and catch the eye when viewing the page.
3. Volumetric. Some web designers are moving away from flat and minimalistic design trends and are using stand-alone images instead of icons. These can be clippings from product photos or thematic pictures.
4. Simple elements. In some cases, not pictures are placed on the site, but simple geometric shapes or numbers, not to clutter up the design with elements.
5. Font icons. It is a special kind of icon connected to the site as a font with vector images instead of symbols. The advantage of these icons is changing colors, shadows, sizes, and other CSS properties.

The Best Sites for Free Icons

There are various free icon libraries for you to choose from. We offer you to have a look at the best ones:

• Flaticon is a free website for icons allowing you to download free icons png, edit, and use. The only important thing is that you should attribute the author and provide the link. It’s considered to be the largest database of free icons for web, iOS, and Android applications available in PNG, SVG, PSD, and BASE 64 formats.

• BestWebDesignFreebies.com is a website that offer a variety of web design freebies, including icons and background in different formats and styles. The website has a simple and easy navigation as well as an easy to use search feature. All of the freebies that they offer are 100% free and require no attribution.

• Icons8 – a platform that offers free design tools, vector illustrations, free photos, and music. Its punchline is a wide variety of icons from the most commonly used menu and search icons to extraordinary Star Wars symbols. Moreover, it offers you diversity in design even if you’ve already chosen a particular icon. Thus, this tool takes care of you and makes everything possible to achieve the best results.

• Freepik – is a search engine that helps graphic and web designers find high-quality photos, vectors, illustrations, and PSD files for their creative projects. It is a great tool to help web masters find the graphic files they want without manually searching through dozens of websites. Moreover, it offers related icons for visitors to decide which one it’s better to choose.

Besides, it presents icons for both personal and commercial use in the most popular formats.

• Iconstore is about unique, quality, and spectacular icon packs. You can choose from colored icons, glyph, or outlines and categories, such as fashion, food, beauty, etc. With these products, you’ll show your business competence for sure.

It’s not a secret that today users scroll the content, and only if something attracts their attention, they start reading the text. Icons from this website will cope with this task 100%.

• Iconshock – get free icons entirely adaptable for your digital projects. This tool offers packs consisting of 1000 unique icons and considering all the possible spheres of business. For example, you can find an eCommerce pack of icons there and transform your online shop. Besides, Iconshock has a specific benefit that other platforms can’t boast, mainly 3D icons.

• Flaticons.net provides the opportunity to generate beautiful icons and customize them for free. Thus, you can resize them, change colors, shapes, and backgrounds. Also, it offers impressive free icons for website, their sets, and paid icon deals for affordable prices.

• Streamline – enjoy 100 000 icons, illustrations, and emojis for your brand development. There is an offer for every taste – light or bold free icons for website, minimal and geometric, colored with shades, mini bold or mini light, a friendly style, cyber line, etc.

Moreover, it does all the work for you. After choosing the appropriate category, it shows you the icons divided according to the necessary website element. For example, if you need symbols for an eCommerce site, Streamline offers you icons for products, discounts, baskets, etc.  If you like some premium products, there is a 5-day trial period for you to decide whether you’ve made the right choice.

• Iconfinder – is a free, flexible, and easy-to-use platform for icons searching. It provides convenient search filters, so you’ll undoubtedly find what you need according to:

– price;

– style;

– license conditions.

Even if you like a premium icon, there are good pricing plans so that it won’t cost you a lot of money.

• DryIcons differs from other platforms by the variety of colorful free icons for website design. Undoubtedly, it’s another convenient site for search.

• Google Fonts is a free website for icons with everything you need for a website launching, considering calls to action, easy navigation, presenting content, social media integration, visuals, communication, adding files, maps, notifications, etc. Just download free icons png and change color from black to white and from outlined to filled design.
• Font Awesome –  one of the most favorite users’ icons library and editor. This editor enables you to change colors quickly, add a custom style, adjust things like rotation and even transform your logo into a unique icon. In addition, it offers exclusive and lightweight duotone icons with a consistent look, clean and precise design variations in multiple formats created by experienced designers.

• With Pngtree free website for icons and such filters as category, sort, format, and related searches, you’ll meet your requirements without a doubt.

Time to Find Out How to Use Free Website Design Icons

Most online sites for free icons have similar usage conditions. Although they are free, some of them have licensing requirements. Therefore you should log in or buy at least the cheapest plan to use icons for free and without any links.

With MotoCMS templates, you can choose from the list of current icons or add your own in the form of an image(if necessary). To manage it, go to Widgets – Accordion. Nowadays, accordions are popular interface elements. For mobile users, it’s an essential tool that folds content and makes the page length acceptable. On desktops, they reduce visual complexity and allow visitors to focus more on the content.

Then, click Settings on the right—Items—Add button. That’s all. Note that it’s better to download free icons in PNG format.

Some Tips to Avoid Mistakes

1. Choose the icons with apparent meaning, so the users know what to expect and click on them. For example, use an email icon for the contact button to indicate to users that clicking on it allows them to send you an email. Of course, if it plays a decorative function, you have more space for your imagination. Also, avoid using inappropriate and random symbols and follow their consistency.
2. In most cases, icons should be used with a piece of text, as it’s often unclear what the icon stands for. Thus, they are additional tools that emphasize content.
3. Do the test and check whether the chosen free website icons implement their functions. You can ask your friends or clients to give feedback on the icons’ work, whether they understand what each one means or not.
4. Follow the same style, size, and color. To make your site look professional, choose a set of free website design icons. Downloading symbols from different sites for free icons and combining them on one page won’t bring good results.
5. Does the size matter? Small icons provide the same level of visual interest as large ones but do not distract attention so much. Ensure that the icons are easy to recognize and close in meaning to the text they focus on.
6. It may sound simple, but it’s essential not to overuse icons. When you have unlimited access to free platforms, it doesn’t mean you must place signs everywhere. Use spare space(sidebars, headers, footers, and lists) reasonably on a page. Usually, it’s an excellent solution for presenting your business benefits, strengths, services, and products:

• listing services is a common practice and a necessary part of effective marketing, but the listing itself is trivial and boring. The use of icons in combination with the feature list makes it more attractive and informative;
• icons should be consistent with the content and have a simple design. Define what you want to express with your content and choose an icon based on that. What is the topic of the website or article, colors, and style?

Key Answers to Ask Before a Final Decision

1. Ask yourself whether an icon can:

• help the user find what they are looking for;
• improve visitor’s perception;
• make the product visually appealing.

2. Decide whether a selected icon:

• is clear to target users;
• has a text to improve usability;
• is clickable;

If you answered “yes” to all questions, you can use the icon.

3. Don’t use an icon if it:

• doesn’t help the user;
• clutters the interface;
• is interpreted ambiguously.

How to Create Your Own Icons

Using standard or clear-to-understand icons certainly won’t play against you. Nevertheless, if you can’t find the desired symbols on sites for free icons, you can create them on your own:

• transform your logo design into a truly unique icon. You can do it with the help of online tools(Onlineconvertfree.com, Online-convert.com, Ico Convert, or Adobe Photoshop, for instance). The icon should reflect the name or essence of the resource and answer the question: what is the site about? The size should be standard(16 – 16 or 32 – 32).
• take a photo and create a symbol from it;
• ask a designer to think about something special but clear for users.

Give a Chance to Free Website Design Icons

Icons serve the same psychological purpose as empty lines between paragraphs: they visually divide content, making reading less intimidating. A well-formatted page with text breaks and accented icons is easy to read and engaging enough to keep visitors’ attention. Stop wasting time writing huge texts that nobody reads. Start using icons!

Please consider the sites for free icons and everything we’ve discussed and use the opportunities effectively. Remember that such simple tools as icons may play a significant role in a good user experience, website navigation, and ideal bounce rate.