Welcome!

[Vitaly]

Here is how it works: you tell us what icons you need, we design them together with SoftFacade (who created the beautiful Smashing Retro Icon Set recently) and release them for free. And to make it a little bit more interesting, we'll smash 6 commenters and forum participants with original nerdy presents. To participate, just suggest an idea for a great, useful icon set in the comments to our (not yet published) post or in this forum thread.



How do I participate?

The participation is very easy – just let us know what icon set (topic or theme) you would like us to design in this forum thread. The set may contain at most 8 icons. Please also feel free to suggest what icons the set should contain.

On the 20th of March we'll select most popular ideas and requests and will publish a poll in our magazine, letting our readers to vote for their favourite theme/set. Once it's done, the creative minds behind SoftFacade will carefully design the set and submit drafts of their upcoming work in the forum, documenting the design process. Hence, you can observe how the set is created and - if there is something you would like to change - communicate with the designers directly. You can keep track of the updates on Twitter @smashingmag or @softfacade.

Awards

6 out of all commenters and active participants in the forum will be rewarded with Mac Dock Icon Throw Pillows (see images below). The winners will be picked randomly and announced in the forum and on Twitter briefly after the theme of the icon set is chosen.




Finally, we'll release the set and we'll give it away for free download and for free personal and commerical use.

And now we would like you to decide what icon set we should release next and design it — especially for you. We hope to get great feedback from you and we would like to thank SoftFacade for their cooperation in this event! Please feel free to spread the word – we would like the design community to decide what is most useful and most interesting for most designers out there!

So, what icon set is it going to be, folks?

[Hein]

Hi SM,

I would really see some cool icons for inside a portfolio, like services, porfolio, clients, about me and contact icons in a neutral style. A nice style that goes with different design styles.

Regards,
Hein

[ElF]

What about a security icon set - including captcha, lock, unlock, password etc?

[liz]

I'm going to say shopping carts icons for a website. There's a bunch out there, but they're all. the. same.

[akay]

I would like a icon set for a webshop that are selling jewellery...I want the icons should be stylish, elegant and reflect the valuable products that are in the shop.

[tester000]

What about the set for online-shops related to sports?

[tamarick]

I'd like to see a sports or a fantasy sports related icon set.

[heady]

I'd like to see something that incorporates design warfare. Missiles, bombs, lasers, guns, done in a playful light. I find the psychological aspect of design to sometimes feel like a battle, that each design is vying for attention, secretly engaging in different tactics to defeat the enemy. Carrying through that metaphor with an icon set based around weapons + user experience + graphic design could present some unique and colorful opportunities for execution.

Great idea and looking forward to seeing what comes from the entries!

[.V1]

I would really like some development based icons, for like mysql databses, php, dreamweaver pimped icons, aptana, jQuery? Spry notebooks etc.
Just nerdy coding icons

[kReEsTaL]

I would love a set gathering artist tools, like pencils, brushes, markers, watercolors, ...

There are some sets which contain here a brush, there a pen, but no common set gathering every tool. That'd be pretty convenient and original! It could be used on portfolios to show what tools the artist/design does actually use.

[Daniel]

What about a community site icon set like, profile, photos, group, video, gifts, comment, rate, settings...

[lewii]

I'd like to see some icons designed for a security suite to beat the text based messages you get for things like scan started, firewall access needed etc.

Maybe a robber knocking on a window or something along those lines...

[vincentlepes]

I think what would be most useful is to provide more generic icons for designers, like the ones you highlighted in your recent article about icons at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03 ... eb-design/. Pencil, box, briefcase, signs, downloads...stuff that could be used generically for headings like portfolio, about us, and other generic designer related icons. I think this would be useful as there are plenty of icons to cover this need but there are only a couple good sets, and I am so tired of seeing them everywhere. Since most of your audience are probably web designers I think it would go over really well, and your quality would be better than most alternatives .

[KiTsuNe]

How about a computer virus icon set? The set is composed of 7 most popular viruses that have attacked 7 most popular software such as Windows, MSN, Microsoft Office, or even some AntiVirus software The kinds of virus could include those spams that cause trouble to social networks like Twitter, for example. The last icon in the set would then be kind-of cage icon with a little smashing-labeled lock. This last icon should have transparent background and can be used together with the other 7 seven icons to, consequently, create another 7 unique icons

[PatrickSamphire]

I'd like to see a quirky social network icon set. You've done a couple of those in the past, but there's always room for more, and there aren't enough great ones out there. Most are very boring and very similar to each other. I'd say they would need to include Facebook and Twitter icons at the very least, as those are the most-used networks, then maybe MySpace and few of the other larger communities. I would want to avoid the social bookmarking sites, though, because there seem to be millions of icons for those.