Font Awesome is one of our favorite, favorite things. We can’t tell you how many times a day we need to iconify (sure, that can be a word!) an idea. Here are just a few of the concepts we’ve had to come up with icons for:
- Cemeteries
- Foot problems
- Taped interviews
- Due diligence
- Arenas
- Gross impressions
This is why we have fallen in love with Font Awesome. It’s a font that contains 519 icons! They have icons for diamonds, beer, the subway, a judge’s gavel, a motorcycle, an eyedropper, a Visa card, an ambulance… and of course many, many more. That may not be enough to accommodate every possible icon need we’ll ever have, but it’s a great start. More importantly, we can embed Font Awesome in a website, so that the icon(s) look crisp and perfect at every size, and they load quickly. No Javascript is required, which adds to the awesomeness factor. And best of all, it is free!
Font Awesome can also be used in printed documents by downloading the font file (it ends in .OTF) and installing it on your computer. You can then choose Font Awesome in your dropdown list of fonts and use it as you would any other font. Even if you’re not a designer, you may have a use for Font Awesome. If you’ve ever used Wingdings, you’ll find Font Awesome approximately 100 times better. Here’s a cheat sheet that tells you all the characters available… and there are a lot.
Font Awesome even allows you to request new icons. There’s a Font Awesome community on GitHub, and you can visit it to search to see if other people have requested your icon, or to submit your own wish for a particular icon. There’s no icon for “tombstone,” for example, which would have been quite handy for our list above.
The Internet can be a lovely, generous place, don’t you think?
Need someone to make you an icon to represent the concept of capital gains? Of pizza? Of poetry? They may not exist as icons in Font Awesome, but we remain, as always, full of ideas. Contact us!
