[HN Gopher] Show HN: Iconduck - 100k open source icons, download...
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       Show HN: Iconduck - 100k open source icons, downloadable and
       searchable
        
       Author : onassar
       Score  : 339 points
       Date   : 2021-01-22 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (iconduck.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (iconduck.com)
        
       | onassar wrote:
       | Hi all; I designed a site called Iconduck (https://iconduck.com).
       | 
       | There are so many dope open source icon sets out there. I brought
       | a bunch of them (132 so far) under one roof. I made them
       | searchable (using typesense.org), and list out the license
       | details and link back to the site or GitHub repo.
       | 
       | I'm not much of a designer, and it's just a first stab at the
       | concept. It's been done, but I wanted to also build it API-first,
       | since I know it would be useful to be able to search through them
       | all for developers.
       | 
       | I'm always on the lookout for new icon libraries to include, and
       | plan on making it easier to learn more about the designers
       | themselves. If you have any ideas on icon sets or libraries to
       | include please let me know in the comments :)
        
         | rayrag wrote:
         | Could you list all those 132 icon sets somewhere -
         | iconduck.com/sets returns 404 and in iconduck.com/licenses you
         | are showing only 1-2 set for each license.
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Yep I had those listed, but ran into some performance issues.
           | Will get that worked out (you guessed the right path, btw ;)
           | 
           | If you want, you can join the MailChimp so that I can let you
           | know when that page is back up: https://iconduck.us7.list-
           | manage.com/subscribe?u=66c12f50e51...
        
         | superasn wrote:
         | Website looks great and returns icons for all my searches.
         | 
         | I hope I never have to use flaticon again after this. Their
         | database of icons is amazing but website is so annoying.
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Great to hear. I actually wanted to mention that Typesense
           | very-generously is powering our search
           | (https://typesense.org). They've been soooo easy to work
           | with, so def consider them for any search projects.
           | 
           | Regarding flaticon: what about the site do you find annoying?
           | This way I know what to avoid ;)
        
             | chrisBob wrote:
             | One feature I like on flaticon that you are missing is the
             | option to download a png at a certain size. SVG is great,
             | but if I want something quick to drop into an iOS app,
             | grabbing the png at 64 pixels wide is very convenient.
        
               | onassar wrote:
               | I'm working on that right now. Hoping to have it up later
               | tonight ;)
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Check out: https://thenounproject.com/
         | 
         | This site has a similar goal, with a huge amount of icons
         | already available, free to download.
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Yep I know them very well! They're amazing! I wanted to build
           | something that wasn't so much a product, but more so about
           | the open source community and all the icons. They're a
           | fantastic company and product, though!
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | I just checked them again, and I must say that I'm a bit
             | disappointed in how they seem to have become more
             | commercially oriented over the years.
        
               | onassar wrote:
               | Yeh it's tricky. They have some pretty amazing icons and
               | services, and probably one of the most reliable APIs I've
               | worked with. And so, that costs $. It is a bummer, but
               | there's always that trade off I suppose.
               | 
               | Hoping Iconduck can fill a bit of a void when it comes to
               | open source contributions. I'll be very consistent with
               | it, adding new icons every week, improving the searching,
               | and the design.
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | Can't you (legally) pull all the Create Commons-licensed
               | icons from their website? Have you tried contacting the
               | original creators?
        
               | onassar wrote:
               | Do you mean from Noun Project? I wouldn't do that (for a
               | couple reasons). The main one, is that I want to always
               | be able to link back directly to the creator's repo and
               | license. It gets a bit meta when people start collecting
               | icons from other 3rd party sites. As for whether it's
               | allowed, I think it depends on the specific license. For
               | example, some licenses may not allow for redistribution
               | generally, but then may grant a special license to a
               | provider (for example, like Noun Project). So then, you
               | may find yourself violating a license that you didn't
               | even know about.
               | 
               | So the rule is, I'll only include icons that have
               | licenses that specifically allow redistribution and
               | attribution, and I'll almost always link back to the
               | repo. The exception is some sets aren't hosted through
               | GitHub or GitLab, so I'll link back to their respective
               | website.
        
               | onassar wrote:
               | (see below; didn't reply to the right message)
        
         | slim wrote:
         | I was surprised the site did not have an icon, so I searched
         | for duck and found the duckduckgo icon. are you sure it's
         | opensource ?
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Yep; those icons can be used freely, however Trademarks
           | apply. Generally, that means you can use it (for example,
           | link to Duck Duck Go), but you probably couldn't sell it on
           | t-shirts
        
           | mrkwse wrote:
           | The duckduckgo icons are labelled as such. Plenty of icon
           | sets will have recognisable brand assets for the likes of
           | social media platforms and so on, which will allow use
           | according to certain guidelines.
           | 
           | Their inclusion probably isn't an issue in itself, but the
           | blanket guidance in the copy above the result will be.
           | 
           | > The icons below can be used for Personal & Commercial
           | purposes. They can be used on your website, branding and
           | designs.
           | 
           | Obviously assets relating to existing brands will never be
           | permitted for use in the branding of an unaffiliated party.
           | onassar may want to update the guidelines to note such
           | exclusions.
        
             | onassar wrote:
             | Thanks for the notes mrkwse. I try to show copy like the
             | following when trademarks show up:
             | 
             | > Naturally, trademarks apply to any brand icons or logos
             | above. That means that you can use them in practice (for
             | example, linking to the respective service), but that the
             | company likely has limitations on how else they can be
             | used.
             | 
             | I need to do some work to communicate that better :)
        
         | sytelus wrote:
         | Super important: your website title should include search
         | terms! It currently just says "Iconduck". It should be
         | something like "Iconduck - free open source icons, images and
         | cliparts"
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Yep! Will get that data updated soon. Very much an MVP ;)
        
         | sanketdasgupta wrote:
         | Will you be open sourcing the site itself?
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Hoping on it. I'm not as familiar with modern approaches to
           | open sourcing the whole platform (I'm a bit of a dinosaur
           | when it comes to development), but in the short term, I'll be
           | open sourcing a ton of data for all the different icon sets,
           | as well as little scripts and plugins I built for Iconduck.
        
         | spatley wrote:
         | Great site, would love to see advanced search, especially to
         | search within a specific icon set. Often I am building a
         | graphic and want consistency across images, so finding an icon
         | I like and then taking all other images I use from the same set
         | would be super useful.
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Yep! I already have that functionality done, I just haven't
           | gotten around to building a nice UI/UX for that. On it,
           | though.
        
         | t_smith wrote:
         | Great job on the launch - I'm always trying to grab new icon
         | sets. I'd love to be able to re-color icons (e.g. black -->
         | white) and group them for batch downloads.
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Yep the recoloring should be available pretty soon, as well
           | as batch downloads :)
        
         | breck wrote:
         | Love it! Search is a little slow for me (instant search would
         | be great!) but other than that, awesome!
         | 
         | Especially for a "first stab!"
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Thanks! The search is powered by Typesense
           | (https://typesense.org), but there's a good chance I'm not
           | running the queries properly. Will look into that, and hope
           | to add instant search soon.
        
       | johns wrote:
       | In the Windows 3.1 era I compiled different icons I could find
       | into packs that I sold as shareware, taking $10 orders via checks
       | in the mail and sending out 3.5" floppies in return. This is much
       | better.
        
         | onassar wrote:
         | Hahaha oh boy: I may have been one of your customers. I had
         | literally hundreds of folders of icons that I also wanted to
         | keep offline incase the site went down. It was such a pain
         | managing them.
        
         | ChickeNES wrote:
         | You might get a kick out of this Twitter bot then:
         | https://twitter.com/win_icons
        
           | onassar wrote:
           | Haha what I like about those icons is they're actually pretty
           | effective at grabbing attention. That retro/throwback thing.
           | Thanks for the link. Now I gotta find out if they're open
           | source ;)
        
       | wmab wrote:
       | This is great, nice work! Who is building the Figma plugin?! :)
        
         | onassar wrote:
         | Haha that's on the list! Any others you recommend?
        
       | Fileformat wrote:
       | Shameless plug for IconSearch [1], my similar site focused on SVG
       | icons on Github/Gitlab. You can see my list of icon sources [2],
       | and website source is available [3].
       | 
       | [1] https://iconsear.ch/
       | 
       | [2] https://iconsear.ch/sources/index.html
       | 
       | [3] https://github.com/VectorLogoZone/logosearch
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | atum47 wrote:
       | lovely. thanks for sharing
        
         | onassar wrote:
         | Totally. Let me know if you have any feedback or ideas :)
        
       | swyx wrote:
       | here's my icon cheatsheet with a bunch of similar projects if it
       | helps anyone solve their icon problems https://github.com/sw-
       | yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#gen...
       | 
       | added iconduck now!
        
         | onassar wrote:
         | Amazing thanks! Will be adding a few hundred each week (at
         | minimum), so if you want you can mark that it's continually
         | being updated :)
        
         | majora2007 wrote:
         | Thanks for this, great resource. Perfect for one of my in-
         | development projects.
        
       | pradeepb30 wrote:
       | this is fantastic. Seems like a great resource.
        
         | onassar wrote:
         | Thanks! If you know of any other open source icons let me know
         | :)
        
       | genmud wrote:
       | Can you add a Copy SVG button to them? HeroIcons [1] has this and
       | I didn't know what I was missing until I started using it. I can
       | basically just copy and paste directly into html pages rather
       | than download the icon and either view the xml or have to do an
       | img tag.
       | 
       | Sure, if there is an icon that is used all the time, I will save
       | it, but its really nice for prototyping.
       | 
       | [1] HeroIcons: https://heroicons.com/
        
         | onassar wrote:
         | Yep. I actually ran into that while using Iconduck to find a
         | link & GitHub icon haha. I had to download it, then view
         | source, etc. I need to figure out an updated preview modal UI
         | to accommodate that and PNG downloading, but it should be very
         | doable in the next few days.
        
       | aigoochamna wrote:
       | Awesome-- could you provide a download link for the entire icon
       | set? I'd prefer to have a local copy and find as-needed.
        
         | onassar wrote:
         | Yep that's on my todo for the next major release. Also hoping
         | to let people group together multiple icon sets and download
         | them all at once.
        
           | tomcam wrote:
           | Maybe charge for the download all feature?
        
             | onassar wrote:
             | Possibly, yeh.
             | 
             | Tbh, there's a part of me that really doesn't want to try
             | and productize it. I really love the idea of building an
             | icon service that pulls in as many developers/designers as
             | possible. OS has been a huge part of my career, and being
             | able to give back can feel pretty fulfilling on those down-
             | days.
        
       | aasasd wrote:
       | By now I'm gonna need a site listing icon collection sites.
        
         | onassar wrote:
         | Hahahahaha
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-22 23:00 UTC)