While it’s easy to find free icons on the Internet these days, the best way to make your website’s design unique is to create your own custom icons. If you have never done it or have little experience, you should definitely take a good look at these icon design tutorials and articles.

Getting started with icon design

While these articles are not really tutorials, they are great resources too understand the basics of icons creation.

1. Icon design explained (quickly)

A presentation by John Hicks, a great watch for designers who want to understand some concepts before creating their first icons.

2. 7 Principles of Effective Icon Design

Great pieces of advice in this article on PSDtuts, a must-read whether you’re a seasoned icon designer or not.

3. 10 Mistakes in Icon Design

While it is good to know what to do when creating icons, it’s also good to be aware of mistakes to avoid.

4. Icon Design: Bitmap vs Vector

An article that answers the following question: “Why do you deliver your icons individually sized in PNG or GIF files, when a single vector file like SVG or EPS can be made any size we desire?”

5. 10 Tips for Effective Icon Design

More tips to help you understand how icon designing works.

6. The making of an icon

A complete walkthrough the creation of an icon, gives a great overview of the process.

Icon design tutorials

For a more practical approach, here is a list of tutorials that will help you to understand how icon design work by doing it.

7. How to Design Mini Icons

8. Create a shiny icon lock design

9. Drawing A Pencil Icon

10. Creating an XP Style Monitor Icon

11. Create a closed book icon

12. 3D Mp3 Player

13. Design a calendar icon

14. Create An Aperture Style Camera Lens Icon

15. USB stick icon creation

16. Photoshop Electronic Torch Light Icon

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17. Custom Hard Drive Icon tutorial

18. Design a Detailed Compass Icon in Photoshop

19. Create a Custom Mac OSX Style Address Book Icon

20. How to Turn Glasses into a Great Geek Icon

21. Wii mote controller tutorial

22. Anatomy of an icon

23. Make a Handy 3D Vector Calendar Icon

24. Creating a Cool Yellow Helmet Icon

25. Create a computer icon

26. Laser Printer icon creation

27. How to Create an Alarm Clock Icon

28. Paint brush icon in Photoshop

29. How to Create a Van Icon in Photoshop

30. How to make a Calendar icon

Icon search engines

If you’re not going to create icons by yourself but still want to use it in your design, no worries. There is plenty of icons search engines out there:

About the Author

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Mirko Humbert

Mirko Humbert is the editor-in-chief and main author of Designer Daily and Typography Daily. He is also a graphic designer and the founder of WP Expert.