Marking a year since the release of their first icon set (Vista Style Hardware Icons Set), Icons-Land.com announced this week the release of a newly updated version of the wildly popular Vista Style Transport Icon Set.
Over the course of the last year the guys over at Icons-Land have been busy! The creative geniuses behind the icon magic have crafted a number of professional-use Vista styled stock icon sets and, by popular demand, they’ve even chiseled out a few ‘just for fun’ icon sets as well.
The site design is clean and simple to navigate, with plenty of high quality sample images of the icons. With Browsing through their icon sets and is quick and easy, thanks to the intuitive design of the sites simple layout. You’ll find an overview of all stock icon sets directly from the homepage, with prices and set details clearly displayed.
8 Icons-Land stock icon sets
The Icons-Land inventory is currently home to 8 great looking icon sets including 5 professional icon sets (Vista Transport, Vista Elements, Vista Hardware, Vista Multimedia and Play/Stop/Pause icons) and 3 emoticon sets (chess, vista emoticons and Halloween emoticons).
Custom icon design
In addition to the 8 icon sets currently available on their site, Icons-Land offers custom icon design, so you can get custom, professionally designed icons for your web project or software application.
Vista style icons
So I was wondering, what makes an icon a “Vista styled icon”? So I got to digging around and found that the Icons-Land designers follow Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines. Microsoft refers to the Windows Vista style “Aero”.
With Vista, “Aero” stands for: Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open – which Microsoft defines as “…design that is both professional and beautiful”. Long Zheng posted way back in 2006 about the daunting task Vista’s designers had of crafting thousands of high resolution icons that fit the Aero profile. It may have taken a while, but man they sure look good!
The Vista style differs from the previous Windows visual style for XP which was more illustrative, and used more satined down colors vs. the rich Vista tones.
As far as specifics go, here a re a few basics of Aero, the Vista style…
- more realistic than illustrative, but not quite photo realistic
- high resolution-ready, with a max size of 256×256, suitable for high rez displays
- 3 dimensional show perspective when possible
- central light source – above & slightly in front of the icon, soft shadows
Free Vista style icons!
Check out these free icon set demo downloads from Icons-Land!
- Vista Style Transport Icon Set Demo
- Vista Style Play/Stop/Pause Icon Set Demo
- Vista Style Elements Icon Set Demo
- Vista Style Hardware & Devices Icon Set Demo
- Vista Style Multimedia Icon Set Demo
- Vista Style Emoticons Demo
Overview of Icons-Land.com
There’s a lot that goes into the design of a professional quality icon, more than I realized, and the fellas over at Icons-Land really seem to have the touch. While the current selection is limited only 8 icon sets in the active inventory, each icon that is available has been meticulously crafted to meet the highest standards.
If you’re looking for a great stock icon set, or you’re in the market for custom designed icons, be sure to include Icons-Land.com in your search.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored review in which I have tried to remain unbiased.
Very beautiful but also very expensive (for me) I liked the free ones they have
Good find, thank you!
danke shön.
Wow I didn’t know about that. Thanks a million.
Yet again another very good article, Really enjoy reading cant wait for your next one. Kevin.