Lists like Noupe’s 50 Most Beautiful Icons Designed in 2008 are exactly why I started Prettify—I completely disagree with 98% of their choices. That list is full of icons that, no offense to their creators, don’t deserve to be anywhere near a “best of” list for icon design.
As a prime example, that list includes, at #20 no less, a set of—I fucking kid you not—“Validation icons” which have aliased text and look like horse shit. Or iconographic horse shit. Actually, an icon of horse shit, if done well, would look better.
I’m not trying to sound like a snob (well, maybe I am, I don’t know), but I started Prettify because people don’t seem to realize there are many designers out there making icons that are so fucking good you can’t even fathom how they were created. And to show people who don’t care about icons that the reason they don’t care is because of all the shitty icons they’ve seen. There are loads of great icons out there, you just have to try harder than some bullshit “50 best” list.
Hell, 2008 is the year Louie Mantia joined Iconfactory. This is a designer who had already done amazing work on his own, and his first set for the Factory was the Frenzic System set (already featured on Prettify), which is loads better than nearly all of the sets on that best of list. Any list that doesn’t include Mantia or anyone else from the Iconfactory is fundamentally flawed.
I could make a list of icons released in 2008 that were far superior to nearly every item in Noupe’s list, but instead I’m going to focus on adding them slowly to Prettify and creating a serious and unflinchingly high quality collection.
