12 great monotone icon sets

Simple monotone are the most flexible icons and works great in mobile interfaces. Here is a collection of the best monotone icon sets on IconFinder.

Monotone icons works well for many purposes. They are designed in the most basic form that can still represent the given object or action. I have put together a list of 10 icon sets from IconFinder - all searchable and ready for you to use.

	IconSweets by Yummygum Yummygum designed 60 free icons which are perfect for iPhone, iPad or Android apps. They can of course spice up any website. The icons here on IconFinder are in PNG, but head over to their IconSweets page to download them in vector format or visit Yummygum's website. The icons are free for commercial use.
	DefaultIcon ver 0.11 by Interactivemania 57 beatiful icons that comes in 6 sizes which covers most of the basic things such as arrows, search, play, stop, next, undo, redo, etc. They are designed by Interactivemania. License: Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported (Read me).
	Brightmix by Brightmix 100 icons with more lots of goodies for mobile applications such as location marker, pin, camera etc. They are designed by Brightmix. License: WTFPL - quite interesting license.
	DOT pictograms by United States Department of Transportation The good old DOT pictograms which is used in almost every train station or airport. Really well designed and can still be used in modern interfaces. Released as public domain, these icons can be used in any project. They are designed for United States Department of Transportation and you can read more about them on Wikipedia.
	Ecqlipse 2 by Christian F. Burprich A real nice icon set by Christian F. Burprich. The license is Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported), so commercial usage is unfortunately not allowed.
	Sanscons by P.J. Onori Onori has been doing two real good icon sets. This one is in an old school pixel style. He has a blog you should check out at P.J. Onori. The license for these icons are Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
	Iconic by P.J. Onori The next by P.J. Onori is probably more usable for most projects. The license is Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
	PICOL by PICOL The Picol icons contains a stunning 495 icons with all kinds of icons from users, documents, locks, tags, etc. Most of what you need is there. Check out their website at PICOL. The license is Creative Commons (Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported).
	Wireframe mono icons by Gentleface.com This set contains 244 fantastic icons. All icons comes in 3 sizes with the largest being 48 x 48 which is a great icon size for websites or mobile interfaces. The license is Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported)
	Dusseldorf by PC.de 102 high-quality free .png icons in sizes 16x16 & 32x32 for bloggers and web designers to use in private & commercial projects. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Don't forget a link back to http://pc.de/icons/
	gcons by Sarfraz Shoukat gcons is free for personal and commercial designs / applications but the icons may not be sold, sublicensed, rented or transferred. If you like these icons, do link back to www.greepit.com, not mandatory though!
	Android icons by Android icons The last set was made for Android apps, but can be used for other projects too. The icons are not exactly monotone but grey with a subtle gradient and shadow. They were designed by Android icons and the license is Creative Commons (Attribution 3.0 Unported).

Other great monotone icon sets

Some designers don't allow for redistribution on IconFinder, but they should still be mentioned here.

Glyphish: http://www.glyphish.com/

Pictoico: http://www.pictoico.com/

Helveticons: http://helveticons.ch/

How to search inside icon set on IconFinder

In case you didn't know it you can search inside icon sets like you search inside a website on Google e.g. 'site:www.mashable.com twitter' would search for 'twitter' on www.mashable.com.

On IconFinder you search inside an icon set by clicking one of the icon sets above. In the search field it now says 'iconset:iconic'. You can then search for 'pen' inside this icon set by typing it in after the icon set ID: 'iconset:iconic pen'.

What did I miss?

Are any icons missing from this list?

Author

This blogpost was written by Martin LeBlanc.