Where to find examples of high-quality app icons: 9 reference websites you need to know about
When a customer asks a designer to draw an app icon, the customer is concerned about two issues: the cost of the work, and the duration of the work. To answer these questions, the designer should have a clear understanding of the customer’s needs. It’s good when you, the customer, knows what a perfect application icon looks like – but what if you don’t know what you want?
There’s a simple answer: look at other work, and listen to yourself. To help you do that, we’ve listed nine websites that provide useful tips.
Before you contact an app icon designer
If you want to talk to a designer about price and timing in an easy and productive way, follow these 5 steps:
- Take your time to look through their existing collections of icons. Your goal is to look, and look again.
- Choose a few that you like. Copy and paste an icon into a Microsoft Word document and describe what exactly you like about it (its shape, color, concept or style), what makes it special to you.
- Choose ones that are up-to-date, but not to your taste. Save an icon and describe what you don’t like about it.
- Describe what your program does, and specify the requirements that the icon must fulfill. If you have any specific requests to round out the metaphor, then make a note about this, too.
- Your document is ready to be shown to a designer. Now it will be easy for them to estimate time and price.
Where can I get examples of modern high-quality app icons?
We don’t want you to wander all over the internet searching for suitable app icon design, so we’ve prepared 9 web galleries for you. Check them out – and choose!
1. IconsFeed.com
This site contains iOS system icons. This resource’s definite benefit is its structure. Simply choose a topic (business, games, health and fitness, music, medicine) or a color that you like, then enjoy ios app icon design of all styles. The collection contains more than 300 images and is constantly updated.
Screenshot from Iconsfeed.com
2. iOSpirations.com
On this website you can find examples of Mac icons as well as iOS icons – altogether, a total of 200 icons of all styles and subjects. The site is constantly updated with new samples.
Screenshot from iOSpirations.com
3. Iosicongallery.com
This gallery is constantly updated and includes more than 800 ios app icons. Each icon can be zoomed in on and viewed at high quality. The best icons from all over the world are gathered here. An icon created by our studio has its proud place in this gallery, too.
Screenshot from iosicongallery.com
4. MobileTuxedo.com
browse http://www.mobiletuxedo.com/category/app-icon-gallery/
This site’s gallery includes more than 50 iOS app icons. Like the previously mentioned site, this one offers no filtered search to make it easier for you.
Screenshot from mobiletuxedo.com
5. Pinterest
Browse https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=iOS+Icon
and https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=Android+Icon
Using Pinterest to search for icons is an unconventional approach. However, if you type “iOS” and “Icon” in the search box, the result might surprise you. It works the same way for “Android Icon”. Unfortunately, it won’t work for “Windows Icon” – but there are already hundreds of examples in our portfolio to choose from.
Search results for “Android Icon” on Pinterest
6. Flickr
Browse https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=iOS%20App%20Icons
The search trick we mentioned above can be easily applied to Flickr as well. The key your to success is to search for “iOS App Icons”.
Search result for «iOS App Icons» on Flickr
7. iosAppIcons on Tumblr.com
Browse http://iosappicons.tumblr.com/
This site has a great number of iOS app designs. There’s a lot to see and plenty to choose from. The disadvantages are that the site has no directory, and the icons are not sorted. The icons presented on this site are from both commonly used applications and less popular ones.
iOS App Icons on Tumblr
8. Icoicon.com
This site collects icons automatically, so you’ll always have some pabulum for reflection. There is a filtered search; the icons are divided into 17 different categories.
Screenshot from icoicon.com
9. Collections for inspiration
Browse http://graphicdesignjunction.com/2013/04/ios-app-icon-designs/
Our last collection of icons has been compiled by a designer. There are a lot of similar collections all over the web, so you can try and find something equivalent. Just google “App Icon Inspiration” or something like that. Perhaps you’ll be comfortable working with this type of information flow.
Example of an icon collection for inspiration
Find some inspiration– then contact us to have your icons done!
Good luck!
