October 09, 2009 by
I’ve always had a bit of a thing for icons. In the sixth grade, when we had time in the computer lab, I would finish my assignments super fast and then spend the rest of the hour trolling the nascent Internet looking for free icons.1
If you were a Windows user you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. Windows placed almost no emphasis on icon design back then and all their icons looked like crap. In fact, not much has really changed; they still mostly look like crap. Although to be fair, Windows 7 was definitely a step in the right direction.
The Mac, on the other hand, essentially invented icons. All the icons in Mac OS Classic were carefully crafted down to the pixel. They probably wouldn’t look very good now, but at the time they were beautiful and complex. Mac users shared the enthusiasm for icons that its creators did, and there was a large community of people that made both commercial and free icons, the latter of which I was a voracious collector. Anything I found, no matter how good or bad, I’d download and add to my collection. I didn’t actually do anything with the icons; at twelve I didn’t have much use for them.2 I just hoarded and periodically went through and looked at them all. Folders within folders within folders altered to look like super heroes and cartoons.
Ah yes, remember that? I’m sure there must have been some kind of .ico format back then, but I don’t think it showed a preview of the icon, so we would create a new folder, and replace the default icon with Spiderman’s mask, or a Stormtrooper helmet. And we’d do that for every icon. If you were lucky they’d just come as folders when you downloaded them, if not, you had your work cut out for you.
Nowadays things are a bit more sophisticated. There’s actually an app thats designed solely for collecting icons. The tasty, tasty CandyBar from the venerable Mac software company Panic is an icon collector’s dream. It centralizes all your icons in one place, and if you’re into theming, it can replace all your system icons at once with a specific set. Check it out; it’s very cool.
Discovering CandyBar several years ago actually restarted my icon collecting addiction, so if you know of any really cool icons or sets let me know. Happy collecting!
1 That, or I’d use the speech synthesizer in SimpleText to read aloud profane words like “butt” and “damn” while I giggled uncontrollably. You know what I’m talking about.
2 Actually, that’s not true. I regularly replaced the icon of the shared server folder with highlights from my collection. Which the computer teacher would promptly remove. And then I’d put it back. And she’d remove it. And I’d put it back. And so on and so on. This went on for years, it was an epic battle.
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