10 Beautiful Free Hand-Drawn Icon Sets

Icons are representations of products, services, and user interface elements that give developers the ability to fit information into smaller areas, relying on visual cognition to convey what an icon will do if pressed. Most icon designs are modern-themed with slick, shiny, and glossy gradients and perfect symmetry.

For the more adventurous individuals among us looking to step outside these preconceptions of what icons should look like, hand-drawn themes that embody intentional asymmetry can be a better option for setting a user interface apart.

This post highlights 10 such icon sets that you can download free of charge and utilize in your designs, user interfaces, and operating systems for an organic and non-standard look. As always, read the terms of use if you’re planning to use these icon sets for commercial work.

1. Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set for Bloggers

Number of Icons: 14
File Format: JPG and PNG
Sizes: 150×150px
License: Custom license – Personal and commercial use

This pack of 14 hand-sketched icons include the logos of popular sites and web services such as Twitter, Facebook, and Digg, as well other handy icons for your blog, such as an RSS feed icon and email subscription icon. Designer and blogger, Chris Spooner, whose work has been featured in industry-leading web design magazines such as .NET, handcrafted this icon set.

Each icon is natively sized at 150×150px in PNG format, which is plenty big for use as social media badges on your web layout; you will probably end up needing to rescale them down to an appropriate size.

2. Artistica Icon Set

Number of Icons: 60
File Format: PNG
Sizes: 24×24, 32×32px, 48×48px, 64×64px, 128×128px and 256×256px
License: Custom license – Personal and commercial use

This huge set of 60 distinct icons was hand-sketched by Rabotilnica — a small creative studio comprised of two programmers and two designers — to have an organic, color-brushed look. Icons include chat bubbles, the standard RSS symbol, a magnifying glass, and more, making the icon set perfect for web-based user interfaces or even for replacing your operating system’s icons.

The set includes six sizes for each icon, from 24×24px to 256×256px. The icon pack is free for personal use; however, if you intend to use them commercially, you’ll have to hand over $17.95. Shortly after the first set was released, it was extended with Artistica Part 2 Icon Set that adds 60 more icons.

3. Natsu Icon Set

Number of Icons: 43
File Format: ICO and PNG
Sizes: 256×256px
License: Personal use, commercial use permission not explicitly stated

Natsu, a Japanese word that means "summer," is a hand-drawn set of icons by Thai Illustrator, Teekatas S. The set has a combination of pencil and watercolor work, with icons corresponding to objects such as sheets of paper, a USB stick, and a stack of Polaroid photos. The artist boasts about the icons’ non-perfection and asymmetry as his response to the "sparkling, elegant and glassy icons" that are more commonplace.

The set is at hand for your personal use; however, the artist did not explicitly state the availability of his icons for commercial use. If you intend to profit from the icons, you may want to contact him.

4. Handy

Number of Icons: 24
File Format: AI and PNG
Sizes: 256×256px
License: Personal and commercial use

One of the industry-leading design blogs, Webdesigner Depot, regularly hands out high-quality freebies to their readers. The catch? Nothing but a few seconds of your time to grab the download code from their RSS feed, which you’ll be asked to input when downloading their freebies.

This icon set includes 24 icons for popular social media and networking sites such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr. The author suggests that they also look great in black and white, so you can open them up in a graphics editor like Photoshop and employ one of the many handy ways of converting images to grayscale (e.g., Image > Adjustments > Desaturate).

5. Sketch’d up!

Number of Icons: 99
File Format: EPS
Sizes: Variable sizes
License: Personal and commercial use

This icon pack comprises of close to a 100 assorted icons sketched using vector graphics software, which means they’re conveniently editable and will scale up and down in size without loss of quality through pixelation.

Icons include the artist’s interpretation of the logos of popular social sites such as Delicious, Digg, and Twitter; popular graphical user interface objects like folders and floppy disk drives; and Apple products, such as the iPhone. Sketch’d up! is a mish-mash of computing-related icons that’s available to you for both personal and commercial use.

6. ColorStroked Freehand Icon Set

Number of Icons: 29
File Format: PNG
Sizes: 150×150px
License: Personal use

These beautiful icons by a Maldives-based artist that goes by the name of Fayaz were drawn freehand using colored pencils. The set contains 29 icons for social media sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook. Among the icons are also a few random and rarely represented products, including Opera and OpenOffice.

The artist of the icon set only permits personal use of his icons.

7. Watercolor Free Icon Pack

Number of Icons: 36
File Format: PNG
Sizes: 256×256px
License: Custom license – commercial use permission not explicitly stated

This free icon set released on the popular design tutorial blog, Tutorial9, has 36 icons consisting of commonplace graphical user interface controls such as a pencil, a padlock, and a calendar. For good measure, Elio Rivero — the graphic designer, web developer and illustrator who created the set — threw a Twitter bird in the mix.

The set comes with 36 icons in PNG format, with the icons’ native size at 256×256px. You’re free to employ the icons in your personal and commercial work (even without attribution), but they’re hands off to those who want to redistribute or resell the icons themselves.

8. Handycons

Number of Icons: 12 icons
File Format: PNG
Sizes: 16×16px, 24×24px, 32×32px and 48×48px
License: Not explicitly stated

Handycons is a set of icons that comprises of social media icons for sites such as Reddit, Twitter, and Technorati. The icons will come to you in PNG format and in 4 popular sizes, which makes them locked-and-loaded for plugging into your website’s design.

Janko Jovanovic, a user interface designer and top-notch blogger, made the set. Jovanovic later updated the icon collection with Handycons 2, which introduces 20 more icons for sites such as YouTube, PayPal and Last.fm.

9. Social Icons Hand Drawn

Number of Icons: 18
File Format: PNG
Sizes: 24×24px, 32×32px, 48×48px and 64×64px
License: Creative Commons

Here is another wonderful set of social media hand-drawn icons that incorporates ubiquitous social media sites such as (surprise, surprise) Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and MySpace. This sketchy icon set was created by a Chilean comic artist that goes by the name of TheG-Force (I believe that’s reason enough to download and use this set).

The work is licensed under Creative Commons, which typically means you’re free to use them if you attribute the creator — again, his name is TheG-Force.

10. 49 “Hand-Drawing” Icons Set

Number of Icons: 49
File Format: PNG
Sizes: 16×16px, 24×24px, 32×32px, 48×48px, 64×64px, 128×128px, 256×256px
License: Unstated

In this icon set, you’ll find various icons such as shopping cart baskets, trash bins, and a buddy icon, all drawn in grayscale pencil. The icons come in 7 sizes ranging from 16×16 to 256×256px in PNG format.

The set is free to download; however, the limitations of using the icons were not explicitly stated. It’s probably safe to assume that they’re free for personal use, but if you’re considering using them for commercial projects, it’s best to send the artist a note before proceeding.

Are there any free, hand-drawn icon sets that you love but didn’t see on the list? If so, add them in the comments below.

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

More About: free, hand-drawn, icon sets, icons, web design, web design series, Web Development

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