27 Amazingly Realistic CSS Icons and Logos
przemekCSS3 comes up and you can replicate fancy effects you thought you can only do in Photoshop. Now people create logos and icons within only lines of code and what’s more no images! Effects are stunning and unbelievably realistic. In this article, we have handpicked some awesome css3 experiments so far which will make you say wow.
Olympic Logo
Name: Doug Neiner
Purely css, ems based and dynamically scalable. It also requires a browser capable of rendering border-radius. For now that includes recent versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer 9.
jQuery Logo
Name: Doug Neiner
We all know jQuery. Probably most of us, favorite JavaScript framework. Logo rendered mainly using border-radius property.
jQuery UI Logo
Name: Doug Neiner
jQuery UI icon. Not as popular as framework brother, but worth being interested in. Similarly, made using border-radius property.
Impressive CSS logo replications
Name: Justin Sepulveda
Nice piece of icon set. All made with pure css and use border-radius, gradient, transform properties. It’s nice to see people come up with such amazing replicas. Awesome!
Opera Logo
Name: David DeSandro
Nicely made Opera icon. Extensive usage of border-radius, gradient could provide this extensively awesome effect. Logo doesn’t look the same on all browsers, especially on IE.
iOS icons
Name: Louis Harboe
Great work. Advanced css3 involved.
Simple css icons
Name: Zander Martineau
I didn’t know making triangles out of css2 was possible, till this article research. Here you can find some pretty and simple stuff like rss icon, heart icon or triangle.
Pure CSS animated 3D Super Mario Icon
Name: Andreas Jacob
Made by with CSS3 & the CSS 4D Framework by Andreas Jacob. Animation work is decent but for now only works in Safari 5.
Some nice icon made with pure CSS
Name: Andrew Kelly
Gradients, Shadows and rounded borders used. Nice final effect.
Adobe Photoshop Logos in CSS3
Name: Radu Chelariu
Great use of gradients and amazing footer. No images used!
Ten amazing social media icons!
Name: Nicolas Gallagher
All examples use simple, semantic HTML. No empty elements, no unnecessary extra elements, no JavaScript, no images.
Peculiar CSS icon set
Name: Lucian Marin
Peculiar is icon package made only in CSS. It was created for sites and web applications that depend on fewer HTTP requests as possible or don’t need to use any image at all.
Twitter icon in only CSS3
Name: Giacomo Bartoli
Obviously used @font-face with little shadow and rounded borders.
Go Transit CSS Logo
Name: Collin Henderson
CSS only logo of Canadian Transporter. Simply done with use of border-radius.
Internet Explorer CSS icon
Name: Andreas Jacob
Best viewed with Firefox 3.6+ & Safari 5. Radial, linear gradients, shadows and lots of empty elements.
Nintendo icons
Name: Drew
Mario mushroom, the Triforce, a Pokéball, and Kirby made with pure css.
Back to the future CSS Logo
Name: Lucas Garron
This logo and the original one. Unbelievably alike. Best viewed in webkit browser.
Raindrop CSS Logo
Name: Sean Martell
Amazing replication of Mozilla’s project i like.
Bahamas CSS Logo
Name: ForestMist
Impressive replica made with use of border-radius.
Reddit CSS Alien
Name: Matthew James Taylor
Nice css logo made with use of “O O _ ( ) ( ) O O O O / – o O O O O O O O O • • ( ) ( )” and some font-styling.
Social Media Pure CSS icons
Name: insicdesigns
Just another social media icons with use of css3.
Bonus: iPhone in CSS3
Name: Jeff Batterton
Well, that’s not an icon, but work involved in this one is really insane. Extensive use of css3.
Bonus: Twitter Fail Whale
Name: Jeff Batterton
Well, that’s not an icon, neither logo. It’s really good illustration made only with css. No images whatsoever!
Bonus: LOST – Animated CSS3 Logo
Name: Marcos Esperon
This example animation plays a nerdy title in the introduction of the series Lost (a tribute to its completion). Best viewed in webkit browser.
Final thoughts
There are many amazingly done css icons and logos. People achieved those effects using only lines of code. Sounds unbelievable, but it’s true. Well, this may not be what CSS is for, but it’s fun way to learn and play with it. So, learn css3, experiment for yourself and remember to check out The Ultimate Roundup of 55+ CSS3 Tutorials.
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eCSSpert
Posted 157 days ago 27A very nice and interesting collection! Congratulations!
I think that you will be interested in my website, and maybe you could add it to this collection.
Thanks
Jeffrey Bennett
Posted 206 days ago 26Something tells me it’s ironic that you can’t view the Internet Explorer logo using Internet Explorer… Great collection regardless!
Jason Sims
Posted 210 days ago 25Clever idea, and really nice work. This isn’t a practical use of CSS though. SVG is far better suited for this purpose.
indianapolis mortgage
Posted 215 days ago 24That is a great point to bring up. Thanks for the post.
songtianyi
Posted 236 days ago 23so great
Atlanta
Posted 248 days ago 22Great work and nice collections…………
Rajendra Patil
Posted 272 days ago 21Also new chrome logo using just css3 – http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8498648/chrome-logo.html
Jose L Pimienta
Posted 427 days ago 20Playing with our logo, using CSS 3 and jQuery http://bit.ly/geLjUw
Alexander Yuen
Posted 462 days ago 19Great results. Shame people using IE might not be able to see the IE icon.
Tekaseo
Posted 474 days ago 17Nice, really amazing work….
Cary
Posted 534 days ago 16It is truly amazing the things you can do with CSS3. I would never have thought about creating icons using it. Normally I would have jumped into Photoshop to create these icons. I sure hope IE9 has full CSS3 compatibility. Even then, we’ll have to wait years before the web design world can use CSS3 without having to worry about Microsoft.
jDesai
Posted 564 days ago 15This are extremely good.. Specially IE logo is mind blowing.
Alexander Yuen
Posted 462 days ago 18Agreed. Think of how many gradients are in the IE logo. I love the iOS icons – they’re so realistic, I nearly don’t believe its CSS.
IT Village
Posted 622 days ago 14great icon set. please continue this awasome work.
Alan
Posted 628 days ago 13Nice Posting, Great one
Chris
Posted 630 days ago 12While this is great and all, you REALLY need to proofread your articles. You have sentences that are missing at least 4 words, and you misspell “jQuery” multiple times.
David - designer
Posted 636 days ago 11Fantastic examples, it just goes to show what can be achieved with CSS. Although i think cross-browser compatibility could be an issue as a logo needs to be consistent throughout….
Thanks for posting.
Tauren
Posted 636 days ago 9The hacker in me thinks these are really amazing. I can totally respect the effort it must have taken to create these.
But my practical side fails to understand the use for this on a typical website or web application. Even if all browsers supported this, it seems like the amount of markup required would exceed the size of a simple PNG icon file. I suppose one use would be if you need to scale them really large, or allow dynamic scaling. Still, I don’t see myself needing these.
So if the objective is to do cool stuff with CSS3, well done to those who created these! If there are other good use cases for actual sites and webapps, please explain!
Tauren
stahlstift
Posted 636 days ago 10Hey Tauren,
think about a VectorGraphic (Inkscape, Illustrator) to CSS3 converter – that would mean no markup required for us coders and we could use images, that can scale in every direction. I am sure about the point, when css3 is accepted and used, there will be a converter :)
Greetings,
Markus
Eko
Posted 637 days ago 8Amazing CSS, thanks for the inspiration
Jannie Nguyen
Posted 637 days ago 7thanks for sharing!!
Bilal Çınarlı
Posted 637 days ago 6Another, Android Logo :)
http://bcinarli.com/android-logo
przemek
Posted 638 days ago 5I like that you like it. @aaron: Android icon is well made. Keep up your site and gather more resources for designers.
Lisa
Posted 638 days ago 4I just LOVE the iOS icons, thanks for posting them.
GKL Design
Posted 639 days ago 3Nice collection, thanks for sharing!
IsTI37
Posted 639 days ago 2Really nice.
When I first saw what it’s possible with CSS I didn’t believed my eyes.
The iOS icons impressed me the most.
I must try to make my logo in CSS3.
aaron
Posted 639 days ago 1Great round-up! I am particularly fond of the Bahamas recreation. I have showcased a few of these on my website, as well as created an Android logo using pure css at http://www.purecssicons.com/2010/07/17/pure-css-android-logo/ with a link to the live demo at the bottom.
The Peculiar Icons set is great and looks very similar to a set I’m working that will be up soon on my site.