Best new icons of 2022

Icon designers have been busy this year. Major platforms like Spotify and Twitter overhauled their icon systems for better readability, consistency, and brand resonance. Long-standing icon libraries like Streamline and Font Awesome continued to expand their offering. Independent icon designers surprised me with new unique styles.

Here are my top 5 favorite new releases from 2022.

Chunk 2 by Noah Jacobus

The chonkiest set out there. A playfully drawn angular set by icon sommelier Noah Jacobus. They are just so good. The bevels!

Some of my favorite glyphs from Chunk, from arrows to animals

Fresh additions to Chunk, from chess pieces to numerals (Source)

Category icons from Airbnb

Alana Hanada and Ashley Seo collaborated on this delightful set for Airbnb to power a more inspired browsing experience through categories like A-frames and Earth homes. Here’s an instance where icons really make the interface. It wouldn’t be the same — functionally and emotionally — without an icon anchoring each text label.

Discover places to stay with categories like Camping, Surfing, and Desert (Source)

Categories, from A-frames to Yurts (Source)

Plump Duo by Streamline

Vincent Le Moign and his team have been incredibly prolific this year with a major evolution of Streamline’s icon system. Here’s my favorite style, unapologetically plump.

A selection of Plump Duo icons (Source)

Plump icons in a map interface, marking points of interest like parks, banks, and restaurants (Source)

Material Symbols by Google Fonts

Google Fonts introduced Material Symbols in April, the variable font version of Material Icons. This means you can easily customize the fill, weight, grade, and optical size of the icons with variable type technology — so exciting! It’s great to see the team elevate icon design by integrating icons side by side with type.

Material Symbols is easily customizable with knobs for fill, weight, grade, and optical size (Source)

Material Symbols integrated into Google Fonts

In addition to a variable font format, you can download Material Symbols as SVGs or access them through the Figma plugin.

3D icons by Jordon Cheung

I’m obsessed with this series by Jordon Cheung. Perhaps they’re more like emojis than icons. So fun and tactile.

A peace sign, a bomb, a mushroom, and a spade (Source)

Nunchucks, an eggplant, and a bonsai plant (Source)

Notable mentions

A few more notable happenings in the icon world. Thicker strokes and sharper end caps are in the air.

• Twitter overhauled their icon system (drawn by Martin David and Andreas Storm, Iconists) and began the rollout in October

A selection from Twitter’s new icon set (Source)

The whale! (Source)

• Spotify overhauled their icon system (drawn by Rob Bartlett) and began the rollout in January

A selection of Spotify’s new icons (Source)

• Font Awesome shipped a Sharp style in August

A selection of sharp icons from Font Awesome (Source)

• Streamline shipped a Sharp style in November

Sharp icons in Line, Duo, Solid, and Flat styles (Source)

• Heroicons (by Steve Schoger) came out with a curvy v2 in August

A selection of Heroicons (Source)

• Microsoft open-sourced their 3D emojis in August

A selection of smileys from Microsoft (Source)

What do you think? What did I miss?

🙏 Thanks to Monica Chang and Tobias Fried