: How to go about creating an Icon Pack As a beginner in Illustrator I've been creating some pretty cool graphics I'd like to share on my website. From what I've seen, people create a one file

@Marchetta832

I would start with a grid that has a good spacing between the icons, not only for making it easier to work but also because you don't have to rearrange in the end. The simplest I can think of is 16x16px icons with 16px spacing between them (if you are working on an icon sprite, space between them should be minimal though). Depending on what you want in the end. But this should make it easier to determine the document dimensions in the beginning. You could also set up guides or a background raster to make sure you are working in the right space/dimensions. I prefer this method over making icons in individual files because it gives you a good overlook if the icons all go well together. Something that you will have to re-evaluate constantly during designing them.

Again, the options are vast, and depend on what you want in the end, so I will just give you an example:

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@Samaraweera207

Another popular trend is to create icon fonts. These are very usable on the web. But this can only be done if you have mono-color icon's. These are actually quite handy, I use those regularly in design because of ease of use.

But most Icon pack I see have a few variations available:
- A few sizes as separate 24-bit PNG with transparency (dark on white and reverse)
- separate AI or PDF files
- Icon Font (if available)
- separate ICO files, in various sizes (real icons).

I haven't seen many on a "contact" sheet, but that could be me :)

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@Murray976

I'm no expert in icon creation, but in my opinion, it will depend on how complex your icons are. If they have many elements, for the sake of size and handling I would use different files to create them. Once they are finished you can paste them in your grid file, but also export them first as transparent .png for example. You will most likely be needing one bitmat file for each icon anyway, as many of the packs I've downloaded had preview folders (as well as the actual .ai file). And if in the future you want to make different packs with the same ones, it's easier to handle too.

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