30+ Innovative Icon-Based Navigation Menus
Here at Design Shack we love a good navigation menu. Lately we’ve noticed a trend arising around menus that use icons either exclusively in place of text or as a support of additional textual information.
Adding icons to your navigation can not only give you an aesthetic boost but actually make for a quicker visual read of the link. Here’s a collection of over thirty icon-based navigation menus that we found online. We’ll conclude with a few resources you can use to snag some free icons to create your own fancy menus.
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The Menus
David Jonnson
KK Media
Bite Club
Mac Rabbit
Toffeenut Design
Listal
Narwhal Company
Pixel Resort
Fishing Cactus
Tutorial 9
Envira Media
Duarte Pires
Weblifting
We Graphics
Nando
Inset
Yanis Markin
Steven Little Design
Daniel Marques
Axel Sears
CV Studio
The Peach Design
Genocom
Michael Hogenmiller
Rather Splendid
Eichi Creative Design
Dan Wiersema
Music Thoughts
Fresh
Dishizzle
Lelegins
Boxee
Tripping Words
Free Icon Sets
Now that you’ve had your dose of inspiration, it’s time to start the original creation step. Use the resources below to help you create your own beautiful navigation menu!
gCons: Free All-Purpose Icons for Designers and Developers (100 icons + PSD)
478 Free SVG Vector Icons – The “Seven” Icon Pack
Icons: Free iPhone Toolbar Icons
iPhone Toolbar Icon Set
Freebie: 20 High Quality 3D Icons
NIXUS Icon Pack: 60 Beautiful Premium Icons (Free)
WooFunction: 178 Amazing Web Design Icons
Colorful Stickers Icon Set :: 20 Icons
Designer Icons – Professionally Hand-Crafted Free Icon Set
Default Icon
Icon Search Engines
Looking for something specific? Check out these great free icon search engines.
Icon Finder
Icon Seeker
Iconlet
Conclusion
With the inspiration and resources above, you should now be fully armed to go out and make some great icon-based navigation menus.
Also, be sure to leave a link to any icon-based navigation menus that you’ve found on the web.
What do you think of http://www.kelseyschnell.com/ ?
Love it! Cool animation idea.
Great examples! I use icons on my site, too, if you want to take a look.
Sweeeeeet : ) really cooool article!
Wow…awesome, very creative icon.
What do you think about http://fincont.info/ top menu?
like it?
and btw, pretty cool menus listed here :)
Cool… Nice Idea thanks for sharing…
Thanks for share :)
Thanks for all the beautiful icon sets, very useful indeed.
Helpfull!
Thank you
Thanks for including my site mate. Great roundup!
Your picture is used by stealth on the website in Japan.
Thanks for including me in your list. Much appreciated! :)
so nice, thanks very much.
just need it