Iconion: awesome icon creator

By using glyphs in the fonts, the icon fonts created are vectors. These offer a range of benefits that no other types of fonts can.

Scale to Size

There’s no need to open Illustrator, Photoshop or other image editing software when scaling font awesome icons to size. It doesn’t matter what the pixel density is like or how good the device’s screen density is, the icons will look perfect.

Responsiveness

When you need to scale your fonts, sprites are often used. They are tricky and take time, but there is no need for any of this when it comes to icon fonts.

Use CSS With Ease

You can make all sorts of changes with font awesome CSS, including:

• Changing the color

• Adding a dropshadow

• Or any other transition you can think of

Better Performance

You will need fewer HTTP requests because the icons are added into on file. They effectively become sprites.

Localisation

Symbols are like words: they mean something different to different countries and cultures. Icon fonts swap the icons depending on the language you want to use.

Icon fonts take an old idea but turn it into something new and exciting. They’re great for projects big and small.

Just one HTTP request is required and you can load a number of icons at the same time. You don’t need to worry about size or quality when you scale them, and they’re perfect for lower and higher density displays, including the retina ones from Apple.

There are some limitations, including the impossibility of adding multiple colours to the fonts. You need to pick one colour and one colour only.

Many web designers are opting for fontawesome webfont compared to anything else. CSS is easy to manipulate the fonts. There is no longer the need to use two different images for the effects. The icons sizes and colour can be changed and animations can be added as easy as any other HTML element.

Icon fonts aren’t just good for offering more control to developers or designers. They can be used in ways that bitmap images simply can’t. The icon remains a font, offering all the properties that traditional fonts do. It scales easily and is a complete vector image. This means it can be viewed perfectly on the Hi-DPI and retina display devices available now.

Load time is also an advantage. All the separate icons within a font are loaded together. There is no need to call a server multiple times for the multiple icons. While this is the same with CSS sprites, sprites take more time to maintain and manage. They also fail to have the vector quality that icon fonts offer.