from Hacker News

Icônes

by tambourine_man on 4/27/25, 12:30 AM with 42 comments

• by grimpy on 4/27/25, 4:00 AM

  This is a nice collection.

  If you are making software, I implore you to do a quick and simple test if you plan on using icons: show them to some users and ask if they would know what they mean. There is a significant chance the icons are meaningless. Yes, context helps, yes, merely communicating difference helps, but, for the most part, nobody knows what any of these things mean.

• by Telemakhos on 4/27/25, 6:34 PM

  This is probably a bizarre question, but how does an icon artist go about deciding which icons to make? For example, almost every set seems to include at least one airplane, so airplanes seem to be something icon artists expect will be useful... but there are also bathtubs in some sets, which seems odd. Are these collections the results of specific projects, or do they anticipate what designers might need?

• by simultsop on 4/27/25, 7:12 AM

  Anthony Fu (https://antfu.me/projects).

  Should to be known widely.

  The guy is a living legend.

• by io84 on 4/27/25, 9:47 AM

  Great resource.

  Has anyone come across a semantic search to navigate these icon libraries? I want to be able to search for “Industry” and get icons returned that show factory, cogs etc. I’ve been using https://react-icons.github.io/react-icons but the same problem there, you search for a string and it just greps across the official icon name. If you don’t know the name you’re not going to find it.

• by jfengel on 4/27/25, 4:54 PM

  What's with the hat on the o?

  In French it's used to mark where an o was followed by an s in Latin, but that's not the case here. Icon comes from Greek word that never had an S.

  Wiktionary reports an Esperanto iĉon, which means "male".

  Perhaps this means something in some other language? Or is it a metal umlaut?

• by flashblaze on 4/27/25, 4:19 AM

  Kind of in the similar vein: https://iconify.design/

• by redbell on 4/27/25, 1:13 PM

  Excellent work, Love it, bookmark it and considered it for future use!

  The HN title is, however, a bit confusing/misleading, especially at the end with 'NES' as it has a special meaning/feeling when read in the context of HN. At first, I though this was a project showing a remake of some icons from the Nintendo Entertainment System. Also, the word Icône (with 'e' at the end and accent circonflexe on letter 'o') is the French translation of icon.

• by beeburrt on 4/27/25, 6:12 AM

  Bookmarking this. Thanks for sharing.

  Reminds me of this showcase of fonts:

  https://www.programmingfonts.org/

• by gaoryrt on 4/27/25, 5:12 AM

  I think this one's the same with https://icones.netlify.app/

• by BrandoElFollito on 4/28/25, 12:16 PM

  I really do not like this site - searching is awful (or I am doing it wrong).

  If I search for, say, "stop", I get a list of collections which allegedly have a stop icon but I need to check them individually

• by behnamoh on 4/27/25, 3:03 PM

  Often times, I don't find all the icons I need in one icon package. I wish there was a way to find icons of various sources (and thus, various styles) and make them more consistent to be used in a program.

• by nielsbot on 4/27/25, 3:39 PM

  If you’re looking for icons http://thenounproject.com (no affiliation) has a huge collection.

• by grishka on 4/27/25, 8:45 AM

  Note: this is unrelated to the Nintendo Entertainment System. It's just a collection of open-source vector icon sets.

• by gitroom on 4/27/25, 10:00 AM

  awesome, i've totally run into the search problem too - always annoys me when the icon names barely match what i need. you ever wonder if icons could just fade out someday and well just rely on smarter search instead?

• by maelito on 4/27/25, 9:14 AM

  Curious why the french word ? Is the author francophone ?

• by dvh on 4/27/25, 7:24 AM

  I have tango icon theme burned into my retinas

• by hexo on 4/27/25, 8:22 PM

  What is the license for this, please?

• by kreelman on 4/27/25, 2:47 AM

  These look great. Thanks for sharing.

• by jerrygoyal on 4/27/25, 3:35 AM

  my go to source for the last 2 years

• by stevage on 4/27/25, 10:03 AM

  The capitalisation in the HN item is wrong, it should just be "Icônes". It's just the French word for icons, nothing fancy.