In the continuing series about the redesign of the Toongabbie Anglican Church web-site, this entry is a little more fun.
Little icons on your web-site are trendy at the moment. I also think they’re helpful, giving something visual to help users navigate.
First, a related diversion: Making icons is a fun little exercise. Using Dan Cederholm’s article, Anatomy of an Icon as a guide, I’ve had a go at making some icons myself.
The graphic below shows, in the top row, icons made for a site about our holiday from 2003. Nope… the site is not online.
The second row shows icons I made for the new Toongabbie Anglican site.
You can also find a printer icon I made on the articles pages (e.g. Streaming Media Tutorial).
Anyway, for the new Toongabbie Anglican site, we could use more than four icons, so I’m considering buying a set. I’ve found a few reasonably priced sets that can be displayed quite small:
- Stockholm including Stockholm Mini by SimpleBits
- Overcast by SimpleBits
- twotiny by twothirty
- Manhattan UM by Firewheel Design
Considering the new site, I came up with this list of items for which an icon might be used, and whether I thought one of the above sets had an appropriate icon:
| Item | Stockholm | Stockholm Mini | Overcast | twotiny | Manhattan UM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (US): | $45 | $18 | $30 | $50 | $79 |
| Add Comment | y | y | y | y | y |
| Audio Download (Bible Talk) | y | y | y | y | y |
| Audio Stream (Bible Talk) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Bible Passage (Bible Talk) | y | - | - | y | y |
| Contact | y | y | y | y | y |
| Date (Bible Talk) | - | - | - | y | - |
| Help | y | - | y | y | y |
| Podcast | y | - | - | y | - |
| y | y | y | y | - | |
| Search | y | y | y | y | y |
| Series (Bible Talk) | - | - | - | - | - |
| Speaker (Bible Talk) | y | y | y | y | y |
| Subscribe/Feed | - | - | - | - | - |
There is also a free set out there that I couldn’t find in my bookmarks. Update: found it – free greyscale icons by e-lusion – doesn’t really meet the needs in the list above.
Can you think of any other icons that might be used?
Which set of icons do you prefer?
Seen any other good icon sets? (not too expensive)
These are really the first sets of ‘professional’ icons that I’ve seen, so I’m not able to suggest alternatives.
But without seeing samples in situ on the new TAC site, the two sets that appeal visually the most are ‘Overcast’and ‘Manhatten’