Icons are the symbol representing an action, application or some other concept to the viewers. They bring components to viewers notice without much effort. Just take an example of application which allows users to add some content. Between a simple add textual button and a plus sign with add label or just a plus sign itself which one would you prefer? Anyone of the two which involves symbol since they are visible effortlessly and tells you about the action without even saying anything. React font icons are popular choice for same. A react font icon maybe negligible in terms of size, code length but definitely significant element for a good UI and UX design.
Icons play a vital role for any website design. Designers take a good amount of time to research on suitable icons so that users don’t have to give same amount of time for searching link to action. This is because icons themselves convey message which influences the users. We have already discussed on UI vs UX which shows how important they are. Now here we will see icons as one of the component to make UI attractive and interactive. The selection of icon depends entirely on action the interface will perform. While most of the icons are universal using almost common image customization can be more beneficial aligning with application theme.
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8 Best and Most Popular Examples of Font Icons Set For React App
Fonts are one of the primary elements that come under notice to users. The type of font you choose depicts more than half of the information than the text itself. You see how sites related to drama and literature have curly italic fonts with pen icons and games have fonts with less curvature as possible. Every component in a web should be trying to pass the message on its own since you can’t rely on one element to tell user what there is to see. So, below we will see a number of popular font icons set ready to be implemented for any UI design.
1. Font Awesome
Font Awesome offers a wide range of icon sets not only just for react app but also for other popular frameworks. They are the default web icon set. Millions of websites including AWS, McDonalds, Inc magazine etc use Font Awesome icons. There are more than 4 versions of font icon available for use that will cover wide range of requirements for any website.
What makes font awesome a popular choice in the category of font icon is that it automatically does the right thing for users. Auto-accessibility feature allows you to do so. Moreover you can size the icons for your UI with rotate, mirror, shrink or grow. The compatibility issue is completely out of context. Stress test confirms fonts present themselves perfectly in all modern browsers. This is not the end since more font awesome icons are in the hooper.
Learn more on Font Awesome
2. Ionicons
Beautifully crafted open source icons offer a wide range of awesome font collection. The premium icons support mobile application for both platforms iOS and Android. Moreover, web and desktop apps also use these icons for amazing design. The collection of over 700 icons also comes with a major advantage of auto version selection based on the platform. Further, if you use outside the ionicon application can choose both iOS and md platforms.
The web components are easy to use and give performant result for any app. The way this icons work is that application just requests for icon after then loading is automatic. Furthermore, hidden icons don’t fetch request making only visible icons eligible for loading. The react font icons don’t require any installation, just import using the library for awesome icons. Finally you can use the react font icons by using ion-icon tag and providing the icon name. You can also specify platform specific icon by adding ios or md in front of icon name.
More on Ionicons
3. Material Design Icons
Material design icons come from design guidelines in simple and decent form for universal application. They set the exposure to right amount ensuring both readability and clarity is maintained. Moreover, they are optimized for any size set. These set of react font icons support all modern web browsers such as IE 10, Google Chrome 11, Safari 5 and so on. However, in case your older browser doesn’t support the icons then you can simply specify icon using numeric character reference.
900+ icons are available for different projects and platforms. Complete set of icons are available from material icon library. They are available in SVG, PNG and other formats suiting your mobile or web app. There’s no doubt that these icons are efficient and look great while being one of the most convenient way. They require only few lines of code to incorporate these icons. This is because the react font icons are packaged into a single font taking advantage of typographic rendering capabilities.
You can customize the CSS file to match the icons according to your needs. For example you may want to have disable style for features not available or want colors to match your UI theme. Whatever you want you can achieve using simple setup and code.
4. Typicons
Typicons are free to use vector icons. It provides a good set of embedded icons for mobile or web application user interface design. Either you want to implement these icons for you project or create your own set of react font icons, you can find the source code on GitHub.
Using typicons are very easy to use. First step includes importing the CSS library in your HTML file then just use the span tag with class name of appropriate font icon. The class name is made up of typcn and typcn-classname. However, make sure path to the react font CSS library is correct to get awesome icons display.
Start using Typicons from here.
5. GitHub Octicons Icons – For React and Popular Frameworks
I think its better to rename GitHub Octicons Icons to GitHub Nonicons Icons since we are currently at version 9.1.1. These are the SVG format icons developed by GitHub for GitHub and available to use for all general users. Platform and language specific libraries are available to use as per your project preference. You can use the font icon for react to your application by using JavaScript API under same category.
Current contribution to the font icon are acceptable for only GitHub staffs. So you may have to wait for a while to contribute but in the mean time check other font icon for react to use or contribute. Also, make sure to read GitHub logo guidelines if you’re planning to use the GitHub logo for your application.
6. Feather
Name for feather comes from its light weight property which won’t add any burden to already exhausted animated application. Feather is a collection of SVG files. A number of projects including react application have used feather icons to get simple yet effective results. They are like the traffic symbols we see nothing much fancy but gives clear idea about the information its trying to show.
To get started with feather icons for your application first you need to install npn. Alternatively, you can download the library of font icon for react and place them in your project directory. However if you’re planning to use the Content Delivery Network (CDN) to directly import required libraries you can skip it. Now just include those library like other JavaScript libraries and use the font in HTML body with prescribed tags for awesome icons. Finally, use the replace() method from the scrip loader. Make sure to go through documentation for proper platform specific implementation.
More on Feather
7. Weather Icons
Who would have though you could create hundreds of icons just to showcase weather. With these sets of weather icons you’ll create a lighting storm in your application and website. Any app or system requiring high quality weather, maritime or meteorological based icons you have reached the right stop. With 222 weather themed icons its both day and night walking along with you.
Although the icons appear purple themed in the demonstration but don’t worry you have full authority to change it the way you like. You can rotate it, flip it change color, make thundering from ground, rain drops going up anything you desire. They also go well with use in most graphics app. You might have seen these font icons on your weather app. They also provide easy integration with popular weather API. These fonts allow you to represent any point of time for any point of day for any point of date and period with awesome icons.
Sample from here
8. React Game Font Icons
Without playing the game itself or watching trailer with minimum knowledge how will you choose the next game to download on your mobile phone? Its probably the icons you see for the game. Better the icon better are the chances of making a good first impression. We all have been through the situation where we have casually surfed through play store or app store and downloaded a game just based on its icon. So you can guess how important icons are for game.
You don’t have to worry about running out of icons for your game because there’s weekly update. The updates are then organized into intuitive categories. There are also a number of games that don’t include any motion. These games are most likely to rely on such icons for telling their story. You can check the example of flick kick football legends game to understand more on what I am talking about.
Conclusion
Its a known fact that you can’t explain everything with words. Moreover, people can find it boring to see textual forms. Normal font texts are not eye-catching so users may miss it and leave your website even though you exactly had what they were looking for. On the other hand, simple visual icons exactly show users where they must head.
Thus, this concludes the article on different font icons for web and mobile user interface designs. If you know more awesome font icons that we have missed make sure to let us know in the comment section.