Icons8
History
TL;DR
Our journey:
- UX agency
- Icon and illustration stock
- Graphic tools
- AI tools
Agency
We began as a UX design agency called VisualPharm (no connection to pharma, just a bad name) back in 2002. We thought we’d be designing interfaces, but people didn’t care much for our designs. Instead, they wanted icons. Back then, every time Windows released a new version, our clients needed new icons to keep their software looking up-to-date.
For a decade, we’d been creating icons for big names like HP, Oracle, Qualcomm, BitTorrent, and over 200 others. Those were good times, until Microsoft threw us a couple of curveballs:
- Windows 7 had the same icons as Vista, so no updates were needed.
- Windows 8 introduced icons so simple that almost anyone could make them.
The demand fell off a cliff, and we had to shrink the team from 5 to 3.
Icon packs
To promote ourselves, we started giving away free icons in exchange for a link back to our website.
People loved the icons! One of them said, “Take $100 and let’s skip the whole link thing.”
Six months later, we stopped taking agency orders and focused entirely on selling icons.
Software
The first version of the Icons8 website took 4 hours to create. Ivan installed WordPress, created an ugly theme, and here we go. It was the ultimate lean startup: people paid, downloaded a zip file, and done!
Icons8 stood for “icons for Windows 8”. I didn't put much thought into it. However, I later came across a deeper interpretation, like the number 8 means infinity. Huh! And now, there's another well-known design website inspired by my primitive etymology!
Ivan
Once we hit 1,000 icons, finding the right one became a nightmare—just rows and rows of icons to scroll through. It was exhausting.
So, we hired the first in-house developers to get a website where users could easily find icons. And a desktop app because it's a time-saver. And recolor icons on the go before downloading them. And…
Now we have more devs than artists.
Photography
We ventured into stock photography back in 2017. The idea was simple: take 1,000 pictures of people and 1,000 photos of objects and backgrounds, and then combine them. Soon we realized the lighting is the key. In order to look realistic, all photos should be taken with the very same lighting.
We spent a couple of years shooting, then we had to quit due to the pandemic.
To streamline our studio processes, we adopted workflows from the film industry. We brought in producers, created storyboards, and wrote scripts. This approach helped us to capture the maximum number of photos in a single shooting day.
The result? Thousands of high-quality images that we could combine to create millions of unique photos.
Then we built Photo Creator, so everyone could get the picture they need too.
We were often amazed at how far people would take their creativity.
Illustrations
In the beginning, Ouch! was a collection of images for typical errors—404, no connection, bad gateway—and we still have plenty of those. Then, we added some positive vibes, like payment processed, success, and so on. Since then, we just haven’t been able to stop.
At first, we invited a few top Dribbble artists to create 10-15 illustrations that would define styles for our packs. Now, we have an in-house team of professional illustrators.
Then we did the same thing we did with photos. We built Vector Creator, an online app where people could create their own illustrations from pre-made pieces.
A common issue with most stock illustrations is that they’re only 90% fit, like a dollar sign instead of a euro, or a desktop instead of a laptop. Vector Creator solved those 10%.
Later, we merged both Photo and Vector Creators into Mega Creator.
Machine learning
In 2018, we entered the AI game. By then, we had over 30,000 high-quality portraits from our studio: diverse models, consistent quality, lighting, and head turns.
Unlike NVIDIA and others, who were using random photos scraped from Flickr, we had a perfect dataset. More than that, it was sourced legally.
The first AI photos looked… well, weird. Sometimes even creepy. But we kept training the model.
In 2019, we generated a pack of 100,000 faces and put it on Google Drive. The release was featured in multiple outlets, such as Verge, Washington Post, and VICE.
Since then, we’ve developed it into a separate project called Generated Photos. Businesses buy generated images as datasets for machine learning, use them to create game characters, and even feature them in movies and TV series—usually as criminals in police databases.
Other products
We omitted many products, such as animations, Illustration Generator, and music. It doesn’t mean they are minor.
Take Lunacy, a full-featured graphics tool that took years of development: built-in graphics, auto layout, shared libraries, offline mode, cloud collaboration and private cloud options.
We release many major and sideline projects. Our key principles are:
- Experiment on top of what we have.
- Pick the lowest hanging fruit and release it.
- If it picks up as a free product, monetize it.
Some of the products that did through all 3 stages are Smart Upscaler , Background Remover, and animated icons.
Stay tuned for more!
About
ICONS8