Flat icon design

Resources provided by a Japanese website, all icons are free for commercial use

Screenshots

Many designers always fall into the same trap when looking for flat icons: either the styles of the materials are mismatched, or the commercial usage rights are ambiguous, making them uneasy to use. In fact, there is a Japanese professional site that can solve these problems — Flat icon design, which specializes in providing free-for-commercial-use flat icons, is a private material repository I have collected for more than half a year.

First, figure out your own needs

Official website: http://flat-icon-design.com/

Don’t start by searching for “flat icons”; first think about whether you want a small but high-quality set of materials, or a huge library of tens of thousands of icons. Flat icon design takes the small-but-high-quality approach. Currently, the entire site has only nearly 500 icons, all of which are custom-designed, not mass-produced generic ones.

This is actually quite important, because too many people spend half an hour flipping through search results when looking for icons, and finally pick out ones with inconsistent styles, which instead wastes time.

No need to wander around for materials

Opening the site doesn’t require much effort to find categories; the high-frequency types for daily use are visible at a glance. The most common ones are PC-related and business categories, with elements like devices, office supplies, and communications all included. From selection to download, it takes just two clicks, no need to wait for loading or fill in information.

Three practical highlights of their icons

• The lines are particularly restrained, and all shapes are the simplest flat styles, with no extra decorations, looking clean and neat;
• It has a strong modern feel, with colors and shapes that fit the current minimalist aesthetic, and it doesn’t look out of place whether placed on light or dark interfaces;
• Each icon has a high degree of completeness, ready to use directly without further modification.

Scenarios where it is useful

I use their icons much more frequently than those from large libraries, mainly for these types of projects:

1. Web and interface design: navigation icons, function entries, and illustrations for onboarding pages, which match mainstream UI frameworks very well in style;
2. Mobile application development: function icons and empty state elements in apps, a unified style makes the interface look more refined;
3. PPT and presentation documents: inserting such concise icons in reports is more eye-catching than long paragraphs of text;
4. Business materials: promotional flyers, product descriptions, internal documents, etc., can also enhance visual effects with them.

Using icons from this site throughout the same project won’t cause style conflicts, which is much more reliable than gathering icons from multiple sources and saves a lot of coordination effort.

Rules to follow for commercial use

Free for commercial use is its biggest advantage, but it’s not completely unrestricted. Before downloading, remember these rules to avoid crossing the line:

• Do not directly use the image address on the site; you must download them to your own server or local project, so as not to burden their server;
• Icons can be used in your works, but cannot be packaged into a material package for sale, nor uploaded to other sites for others to download;
• These icons cannot be used to apply for registered trademarks; it is not allowed to use the icons as your own brand logo.

Several common questions

Do icons require payment? No, most icons are free for commercial use, you can download and use them directly without extra cost.

Can they be used for personal works and commercial projects? Yes, whether it’s a small personal creation or a company’s commercial project, it’s fine, as long as you abide by the three rules mentioned above.

What if there aren’t enough materials? You can use it as your main style library, and supplement with other flat material sources, just pay attention to maintaining visual consistency.

Core reasons worth saving

Compared with large libraries that have tens of thousands of materials, the value of Flat icon design lies not in quantity, but in quality, clear copyright, and being ready to use directly.

When I receive web, app or PPT projects, I will first pick a set of icons here, so I don’t have to spend time sifting through hundreds of images, which improves both efficiency and quality.