I meant it jokingly. It's a brilliant advertisement, to be sure; I think that most people just see things like that as done strictly out of the goodness of people's hearts, and while that may often be true, I usually am inclined to believe the more self-serving aspect of it.
Not that there's anything wrong with it whatsoever.
I wish I had been foresighted enough to realise that the icons were more than the occasionally useful result of a period of insomnia. The set was started because I could not find a good icon set to use in a system I was developing.
I have done almost no icon design since this set was released; The icons have garnered me some personal infamy, and I make a little from text link ads, but I would kill the site if not for the fact that people still appear to find the icons useful and reliable.
For personal work, I use the fugue set linked previously.
Be careful, though- these are the most overused set of icons. They're like the Comic Sans or Papyrus of icons. Like another commenter said, if you're looking for some less-used icons, try these two (free) sets:
I think that's pretty misleading comparing Silk to Comic Sans. A more suitable comparison would be to something like Helvetica or Times New Roman. Ubiquitous and overused but still a dependable choice.
Silk is a good set, but it's true that it's very easy to recognize in the wild. I think it's a good stopgap before you pick something less-used, but if you want your web app to have a voice and a point of view from a design standpoint, it's better to go custom.
I love silk icons! Really clean - I think we need to push for better standardization of icons though. There are too many sites where developers put the icons without text labels and I find myself mousing over hoping for a tooltop while trying to stare at a 16x16 icon to figure out what it is...
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 58.0 ms ] threadAlso recently came across the excellent (CC-licensed) Fugue set.
http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com/
If I were a more cynical man, I might even suppose that was exactly the reason for producing a royalty-free icon set -- to drum up business.
What better way to show your skills to people who would contract you than to point at something as popular as his icon set?
Not that there's anything wrong with it whatsoever.
I have done almost no icon design since this set was released; The icons have garnered me some personal infamy, and I make a little from text link ads, but I would kill the site if not for the fact that people still appear to find the icons useful and reliable.
For personal work, I use the fugue set linked previously.
http://www.tutorial9.net/resources/108-mono-icons-huge-set-o...
and
http://prothemedesign.com/circular-icons/
Be careful, though- these are the most overused set of icons. They're like the Comic Sans or Papyrus of icons. Like another commenter said, if you're looking for some less-used icons, try these two (free) sets:
http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com/
(Though they look a lot like the Silk icons.)
http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons/