Standard Blog Icon

As they say the great things about standards, is that there’s so many to choose from ; )

With the prevalence of blogging you’d think someone would have come up with a standard icon for blogs by now, well apparently not.

A few months ago I was mulling over the idea that there isn’t a universally recognised, standard blog icon, but I got side tracked by god knows what & forgot all about it until a couple of weeks ago when I found the scribbles in my notepad.

So I opened up illustrator and about 15mins later the icon above popped out. OK, I admit I’ve not created a new standard per se, that takes time, but who knows, in years to come maybe everyone will be using it. As nearly all blogs have the RSS feed option and that’s how a lot of people read them, I’ve based the icon on the standard RSS feed icon.

In any case, here it is, it’s free, it’s yours to own, no restrictions. If you think it’s really cool and you want to let me know, then fine, use the Facebook page link, but in all honestly, if you think it’s that good I’d prefer you told everyone else, go to www.theblogicon.com, link to the Facebook page, link to the Twitter page, I’m really not after the glory, I simply want to see a standard blog icon in use.

So please pass it on, you can even edit & tweak it, even call it you own, for all I care (although if you do want to credit me, then remember to use Bernd’s inspired by icon), I just want to see a standard icon in use, I’m not after the glory, just usability.

Click here for a .zip containing the icon in various sizes in PNG & GIF formats, plus the original Photoshop & Illustrator vector file just click the logo above.

blog-icon-200

UPDATE:
to clarify, the blog icon is registered at Creative Commons as Attribution-ShareAlike http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
ie anyone can use it, modify it, pass it on etc, but they must do so with the same rights, ie they shouldn’t charge anyone for it or add any restrictions

you should follow me on twitter here

31 thoughts on “Standard Blog Icon”

  1. Now, that is an (i) inspiring blog icon. Thank you for it and the nice mention. Now let me see what I can mash up from it.

    Find me on twitter, too. I donated the (i) to the public domain, there is really no other way to make it useful to the world.

  2. Love the icon. I wouldn’t use the orange icon though; it looks too much like the RSS icon. Red could be the standard color for blogs, maybe?

  3. I appreciate your efforts. I agree with other comments about the color. If this icon is next to or near a RSS icon it’s too similar. It really should be a different color.

  4. Hi Clark, thanks for your comment. Yes I agree, when I first created the icon I had used the RSS icon as inspiration, but as you’ll notice if you download the .zip file there are numerous colour variations to choose from. In a sense I don’t think sticking with a single colour is entirely necessary (although yes colour is an important aspect)… but when I’ve visited sites using the icon, they have used it in various colours, to suit their own website colour palette.

    Anyway hope you find a use for the icon and spread the idea

  5. there really does need to be a standard blog icon, so thanks for your design ideas, I like them so am including one on my website next to my other social media buttons

    for what it’s worth I like the white on black or black on white. I also like the white on red. I think the colour/look needs to be quite distinct from the other social media buttons out there & these colours I mentioned are!

    have you done anything to drive usage of it as a standard blog icon? I am going to suggest it to a number of influential social media forums, lets see if we can get it happening!!

  6. Hi Linda, thanks for your feedback and support.

    I must admit that I’ve not actively pushed the blog icon, I guess I should a little more. I get around 100-150 people a day arriving at this blog post from google searches alone, so I guess that indicates there’s a need for one, or at the very least, people are looking for one.

    I do have the twitter and facebook pages, but I don’t really expect people to visit them (why would they!), I looked at adding the blog icon onto wikipedia, but without validated external endorsements and links I don’t appear to be able to submit it.

    So any help you can provide via social media forums would be greatly appreciated

  7. Thanks for coming up with this Brendan. We’re looking for a blog icon to use in our emails to our customers so we’re going to roll with yours- I’ll send you some examples when we’re up and running.

  8. Hi Threethirty, thanks for the comment.

    I guess I haven’t made it clear above, I shall update the post, but the blog icon is registered at Creative Commons as Attribution-ShareAlike http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
    ie anyone can use it, modify it, pass it on etc, but they must do so with the same rights, ie they shouldn’t charge anyone for it or add any restrictions, hope that answers your question
    thanks again
    Brendan

  9. Hi Brendan,

    I was making a new iOS style nav bar for my portfolio website and ran into the same problem… I wanted an icon for the blog that wasn’t just the WordPress/Blogger icon or something.

    I’d seen this icon flag up on Google Images (it’s obviously circulating) and thought it was very clever.

    Just wanted to say cheers, its just what I was looking for!

    Mark

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