10 free cartoonish icon sets to spiff up your desktop

by Lee Mathews (RSS feed) Jun 15th 2009 at 4:00PM

Now that I've got a full-time work laptop and a second system to reformat every other day I finally have a reason to customize my desktop with some snazzy wallpapers, sound schemes, and icons. I like to keep my desktop lighthearted, so I tend to lean toward cartoony, fun elements.

All of these sets are totally free for personal use, so download away! If you know another great set, feel free to share your links in the comments!

Comic Tiger - Obviously Mac-themed, but the set works well on Windows desktops, too. Created by Fasticon, but no longer listed on their free downloads - fortunately InterfaceLIFT still has it.

Desktoon - I first came across Everaldo's icons when playing with some Linux live CDs several years ago. Desktoon is packed with 31 pieces of hand-drawn goodness. Available from Yellow Icon.

Fantastic Dream - An extremely whimsical set of 49 icons with an earthy, Oriental feel. Produced by Rokey.net, though the site is sometimes unavailable - you can find the set on Icon Archive, too.

Gartoon - 40 icons from Zeusbox Studio. The memory and desktop icons are two of my favorites. Again, not listed in their freebies, so grab the set from Icon Archive.

Margin - Want some seriously sketchy icons? Icontraband's Margin set features ~70 icons with a hand-drawn flavor. It's a little Mac-heavy, but there are still plenty of OS-androgynous icons for Linux and Windows users, too.

Kearone's Comicons - You'll quickly work out that this was originally a set of PNGs for Linux, even if you don't read the intro. The penguins are a dead giveaway. Whether or not you're a fan of the Clowns of the Antarctic, it's 100 icons of toony fun.

KDE Kids - An absolutely massive set - 240 icons in total. That's more in dozens than some free icon packs contain individually. If you can't a subject covered by these icons, there's a good chance you won't find what you're after anywhere.

Pastel Icons Set - A nice set by Iconica containing 74 icons. This one covers just about everything, from common file types like PDF and JPG to hardware to system icons (network places, recycle bin, etc.).

Systematrix - Ooh, shiny! 28 big, glossy icons that cover the essentials. Maybe more graphical than cartoonish - either way, it's a nice set.

Tags: cartoon, desktop, fun, icons

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

BooyahGuy said 7:06PM on 6-15-2009

BooyahGuy said 7:52PM on 6-15-2009

Sorry, mistype. Not Booyah :)

Generic said 5:04AM on 6-17-2009

What a new feel. These hand drawn icons make me feel the computer is less tech and more usability. Not that this is the case but it feels more approachable.

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