New blog and a free gift

To kick off the new blog on IconFinder I hired IconBlock to do an icon set based on the most popular keywords used by IconFinder users.

Martin LeBlanc 2009 has been a fantastic year for IconFinder. The new version has been widely adopted by the design community and more users are using the site every month. I wanted to thank the users and what better way to do that, than have an icon set made by the talented guys from IconBlock. The icons are based on the most popular search terms Twitter, Computer, User, Search, Cart, Download, Folder, Home, Network, Phone and Arrow. IconBlock made a blog post about how they worked on the icons:

“The core idea behind this set was to make detailed icons that are recognizable in form and look hence the art direction for this project was chosen with reusability in mind. We decided to use a 3D white shape as the base, that has it's own custom perspective, with traces of black glass like textures with a hint of gloss on every icon. The custom shapes were made based on previous common designs, we then reworked them in order to be different than the initial shapes giving them their unique look and feel.

Several concept sketches were made, it was a bit challenging to visualize the icon itself using pen and paper, but when transformed digitally we obtained the desired results.

We were then tasked with making the icons work with different color backgrounds, our first approach was to make the white base into another color, but loosing the white base made this set look very dull and generic. Ultimately we solved this problem by adding color bands that would carve their way into the shape which not only enabled the icons to maintain their uniform look and feel but also be useable on different colored backgrounds.

Some icons proved more challenging than others, which resulted in us adding glass and other elements that would complete the icon and still retain its style. As for the actual icon shape, we made several unique ones, such an example is the twitter icon. This icon is also proof that even a predominantly white icon with minimum detail can relate to the original blue twitter bird we are all familiar with, just by comparing their shapes. The Mail and Search icons by far were the most challenging, one of the major problems was how to make it in perspective and also accurately represent it's function.

The most practical solution for us was to create them in 2D in order to preserve the look we wanted, which would have otherwise been lost if we had kept them in the same perspective as the other icons.

We had a lot of fun working on these icons and with Martin LeBlanc founder of IconFinder. We would like to officially thank the entire staff at iconfinder.net for this wonderful opportunity as well as Pedja Rusic whose creative genius made these icons a reality. We hope you all enjoy using them.” The IconBlock Ltd.

These icons are licensed under: Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 Denmark. They may be used commercially, but link back to this blog post http://www.iconfinder.net/blog/1/

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If you like these icons you can can donate through Paypal. You can choose how much you'll donate and will support future releases of icons on this blog. All icon sets will be available for commercial use.