Best new icons of 2024

Plus: icon news from the year

6 min readDec 29, 2024

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Welcome to my yearly icon roundup! Here are my 7 favorite sets from 2024, followed by happenings in the icon world.

Roundups from 2023 and 2022.

Animal icons for RSPCA by Ross Norton

A phenomenal piece of a phenomenal rebrand. These animals are lovable, recognizable, a bit regal, and harmonious with the octagon and type. Drawn by Ross Norton from Jones Knowles Ritchie.

A grid of happy, colorful animals, including a rabbit, porcupine, and chameleon — A happy grid of animals for RSPCA (Source)

Animated animals pair with the type (Source)

Press release from RSPCA here; Brand New’s review here.

Micro Bold icons for Nucleo by Sebastiano Guerriero

I’ve been loving Sebastiano’s shares this year. Rounded styles can get blobby and illegible, but Sebastiano achieves a well-balanced set with distinctive glyphs for Nucleo Micro Bold.

A grid of bold, rounded icons, including documents and folders — Icons in the Micro Bold style (Source)

A grid of bold, rounded icons for communication, including envelopes, chat bubbles, and writing instruments — Communication icons in the Micro Bold style (Source)

I’ve also been digging Sebastiano’s UI experiments showcasing his icons, like this one:

A facelift for Google Drive’s landing page — Sebastiano’s UI refresh for Google Drive (Source)

Tintin Pixel Icons Collection by Benjamin Dauton

How cute are these pixel Tintin icons?? Made with Luc Chaissac’s Lil’ Pixel Icon plugin. Pixel stuff is in the air.

A grid of characters from Tintin in a pixel style — Pixel-style icons of Tintin characters (Source)

Lil’ Pixel Icon plugin featuring a watch icon — Luc Chaissac’s pixel icon plugin (Source)

Figura One by Valery Belaziorau

This set is full of character and the linework is lovely. I particularly like the organic scribbles, numerals, and music notes.

Five icons showcasing expressive linework: a brush, “H3”, a pen drawing a line, a bicycle, and a smiley — Five icons from Figura One showcasing the linework (Source)

A grid of icons from the Figura One set — Icons from Figura One (Source)

Icons for Helper by Alexis Métayer

Groovy icons for a fictional TaskRabbit-like product called Helper. The project was a collaboration between Alexis Métayer, Théo Leparc, and Bryan Gancedo-Gonzalez.

A set of handyman icons in a muted color palette — Colorful icons for Helper (Source)

Icons for Path of Exile 2 by Grinding Gear Games

From the glyphs depicting character class and weapon type to the highly-detailed skill thumbnails, the icons in Path of Exile 2 exude the language of its dark, gothic genre. PoE2 is currently in early access.

Icons for character classes like Ranger, Monk, and Witch — Path of Exile 2 character class icons (Source)

Weapon-type and skill icons, including Axe, Crossbow, and Quarterstaff — Path of Exile 2 weapon-type and skill icons (Source: Screenshot from me)

Skill icons like Explosive Grenade and Flame Wall sit just right in the skill tree and skill bar — Skill icons in Path of Exile 2’s skill tree and skill bar (Source: Screenshot from Victor Vasquez)

Mega Icon Set by Giulia Boggio

I love Giulia’s type work and this broken-line icon set from them is fire too.

Six icons in a broken-line style, including chat bubbles, a security camera, and a tennis ball — Six icons from Giulia’s Mega Icon Set (Source)

A grid of wayfinding icons in a broken-line style — Wayfinding icons from Giulia’s Mega Icon Set (Source)

Wayfinding icons in context on signs for “Garden”, “Recording Room”, “Emergency Exit”, and “Dog Park” — Mega Icons on signage (Source)

In icon news…

New releases, corporate sets

Airbnb brought 3d icons to their icon game.

A fuzzy 3d paw icon by Airbnb — Paw icon by Airbnb (Source)

eBay overhauled their icons as part of their new brand and design system Evo.

A grid of icons including headphones, hearts, and high-top sneakers — eBay icons (Source)

Figma overhauled their icon system as part of UI3, the redesigned Figma editor. Icons designed by
Tim Van Damme
.

A tilted grid of icons including a flashlight, a warning sign, and an eyedropper — Figma UI3 icons (Source)

New releases, icon libraries

Central released their plugin in January.
Chunk 3.0 came out in January.

A grid of icons in a beveled style, including a robot, a melting face, and a castle — Icons from Chunk 3 (Source)

Font Awesome shipped Sharp Duotone in July and rounded out all Duotone styles in November.
Nucleo shipped their Micro Bold style in May and UI Filled Duo style in November.
Tobias Fried
and I released Phosphor 2.1 in March, adding 268 new icons to the family.

A grid of new icons in Phosphor 2.1, including a cowboy hat, a skiier, and a melting smiley — Icons from Phosphor 2.1 (Source)

Apple enhanced their system of animations in SF Symbols 6—introducing Wiggle, Rotate, and Breathe—and added 800+ new symbols. Thalia Echevarría Fiol walks through what’s new.
Streamline continued a drumbeat of updates for their massive library, including a new Block style.

Blocky icons animate in, as if chiseled from a block — Block icons by Streamline (Source)

New and custom app icons

Gorgeous icon for Linear from Gavin Nelson, with an (unofficial) Figma one to match.

Dark, polished icons for Linear and Figma — Linear and Figma app icons by Gavin Nelson (Source)

Matthew Skiles is prolific as usual.

Throwback! Louie Mantia offers this custom Blueberry iMac G3 Finder icon and many other icons for download.

A nostalgic treatment of the Finder icon in a Blueberry iMac G3 colorway — Blueberry iMac G3 Finder icon by Louie Mantia (Source)

Duolingo generates buzz by changing their app icon every once in a while — I love this shattered Duo.

The Duolingo app icon looks shattered — Shattered Duolingo app icon (Source)

Trends

Pixel stuff is in the air. Luc Chaissac’s pixel icon plugin inspired many sets from the Figma community. Marcin Wichary celebrated pixel fonts at Config 2024. More: Pixelarticons, icons by 2Biiit, Departure Mono. We’re feeling nostalgic!

Bevels are in. Maybe they were never out.

Icons from Sava Stoic (Source), Evgeniy Artsebasov (Source), and Kevin Moran (Source )

Animated icons are increasingly popular but usually feel overkill for me—why do I need to see a heart explode every time I like something? However, when they are meaningful and subtle they are great. I’m liking these playful ChatGPT icons and I’m looking forward to seeing them in context.

5 ChatGPT icons move with meaning: the feed flows in, the eye looks around, the globe turns, neurons fire in the brain, and the chart goes up and down — Animated ChatGPT icons (Source)

Technology and standards

Unicode standards: “Face with Bags Under Eyes” (proposal here) and 7 other emoji were approved in September as part of Emoji 16.0.

8 new icons in Emoji 16.0: face with bags under eyes, fingerprint, leafless tree, root vegetable, harp, shovel, splatter, and flag: Sark — The 8 new emoji in Emoji 16.0 (Source)

Generated icons: Genmoji allows users to create custom emojis in iOS 18.2 with a text prompt. Generating icons is not a new concept (see: Emojipedia’s AI Emoji Generator, Recraft, Magician, and Emoji Kitchen), but has been propelled forward by AI technology.