Pixel icons - those tiny all-rounders!

What 's it all about those weird little pics?

Pixel icons literally are all-rounders. Because of their unique pixel borders, they do not need any background to be placed on a website or application.

The hard and in some parts fragmented border, especially on corners or diagonal parts, may look unfamiliar to the viewers eye, but it is exactly this border, the secret of pixel icons is all about.

Normally an object on a transparent background has an anti-aliased border, which means, that you will find different colored pixels on the border of the image, once you have zoomed it, some of them partly transparent.

When viewing the image in 100% the border has a smooth look, not as hard, as the border of a pixel icon.

Unfortunately, if you try to place such an image for example as a GIF with transparent background on your website, you will experience a strange phenomenon, which you already might have seen, when surfing the internet:

The GIF image will get fragments (mostly white or another light color) on its border. These fragments will appear on every place, where transparent pixels where to be found before.

Because not every program or application (and even not some of the older bowsers) is capable of processing PNG24, which would be the perfect data type to show images with an anti-aliased border on a transparent background, very often the GIF format simply will be the most suitable data format, because it can be interpreted by a lot more programs and browsers.

But … you will still need to deal with the problem of the fragments on an anti-aliased border then.

So, what would be the solution?

One way could be, to place the images on a background color, before saving them as a GIF (or another file).

In this case, unfortunately you would be forced to decide for a special background color. Good luck, if you only need the icon on one special background color.

But, what happens, if you need more than that?

Lets assume, you need your icons to be presented on black background color in one place and on red in another.

Then you would need a single file for every background color, which makes twice the data volume, as before.

This may seem to be no big deal, considering the usually very small filesize of an icon.

But, when it comes to a special application or software and you need lots and lots of icons, all of a sudden the filesize starts to count.

Because it will make a difference, if you need 250 files to present 250 icons, each for example 3kb big, instead of having 500 files to get the same visual results in your software.

This would make a difference of 750kb compared to more than one Megabyte.

To get rid of the background color problem a perfect solution in many cases are - you already guessed that - pixel icons.

These icons can be applied without a background color and you still will not experience strange colored fragments on the border, which are not supposed to be there.

They are not only good for use in the GIF-format, but also for PNG8, ICO oder any other data format, that can carry transparencies.

Another really bog advantage is, that you can place a very clearly recognizable image information on a really small size, like 16x16 pixels and even smaller.

These are the reasons, why we love this type of icons. They are not so easy to produce, but on the other hand so easy to handle, that we are very proud to be able to present quite a collection yet, which will be even growing in the future.

Enjoy our selection and if you have any questions or need anything, you did not find in our selection, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We will be glad to help.