The Noun Project, impressively integrated

The Noun Project and I go way back.  It’s been my go-to icon-finder for creating infographics and presentations and for online course building.

Launched as a Kickstarter in 2010, the site catalogs a huge array of symbols (over a million!) created by designers around the world. Artists agree to select either a public domain mark or a Creative Commons license permitting the free use of the image with attribution. Since the beginning, attribution has been waived with the payment of the user’s nominal fee, split between the artist and The Noun Project. There’s seldom an icon I have not been able to find among this rich collection.

While a handy Mac app has been around for three years, The Noun Project’s recent integrations with Google Slides and Google Docs as well as Microsoft Office applications and several other third-party platforms (including the Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva) will spread these iconic discoveries around far more virally.

The integrated free version of The Noun Project offers 100 of its most popular icons, free to use without attribution with the ability to change your selected icons’ color and size.  As for color choices, beyond the standard black and white, users can select from the preset colors options, use the color dropper to select a color from somewhere on their screen, or enter a hex value. Check out this little demo.

This would be a fine addition to the Add-ons student and teachers use on a regular basis in school on your school’s productivity suite of choice.

If you’re a shopper like me, you will be surely be tempted by the not-free images below the line.

I discovered that for $19.99, educators can get a NounPro license making all of those million + images available with unlimited royalty-free licenses. Even if you choose to cancel your license after a year, you can continue to use the images you’ve already downloaded.

The Noun Project explains: The creator of each icon holds the copyright to their work. By paying for a NounPro account, you get a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide right to use each icon you download as many times as you wish and in any medium, without having to credit the icon’s creator. This is because Noun Project pays royalties to creators each time their icon is downloaded.