The Complete Handbook of Computer Icons
The Practical Buyer's and Owner's Manual for Professionals, Businesses, and Serious Enthusiasts
by Alumigogo Books
non-fiction
The definitive practical guide to buying, using, and maintaining computer icons. No hype, just the technical and business essentials.
About this book
Computer icons are more than tiny pictures; they are a critical component of user interface design, brand communication, and software usability. A poorly chosen icon set costs time, money, and user trust. This handbook cuts through the noise to provide a systematic, practical approach to working with icons, from the first purchase to long-term maintenance and even commercial opportunities.
Written for professionals, businesses, and serious enthusiasts, it covers the essential specifications that matter (SVG vs. PNG, licensing terms, pixel grids, accessibility), offers a decision-making framework for selecting the right tool for the job, and provides a playbook for installation, management, and troubleshooting. You will learn how to avoid common legal and technical traps, and how to evaluate quality like an expert.
Going beyond simple usage, this book also explores the business side of icons. Whether you are a freelancer looking to license your own designs, a reseller, or a company needing to manage a complex brand asset library, you'll find practical advice on the market, the suppliers, and the opportunities. This is your complete, manual for mastering the digital assets that users see and click every day.
Reader Reviews
Cynthia Wilson
★★★★★I've been managing our company's UI kit for three years, and I wish this handbook existed back then. It explains all the minutiae I had to learn through painful trial-and-error, like the difference between icon fonts and SVG sprites, and what to actually check in a license. The chapter on troubleshooting saved me from a full weekend of debugging a scaling issue. It's dense with practical detail but never dry. Worth every penny for the professional looking to take this seriously.
Kathleen Hernandez
★★★★★As a freelancer, I was always wary of legal and technical issues with icon sets. This book demystified the whole landscape. I appreciated that it doesn't just list icons but gives you a real framework for choosing them for a client's workflow, and the business opportunities section gave me a concrete plan to expand my services. It's a very practical manual, maybe a bit dense to read cover to cover, but an invaluable reference I keep on my desk. Finally, a no-fluff guide that treats icons as a real professional asset.