Font Awesome redesigned and relicensed for 3.0

Click to see all Font Awesome 3.0's new icons

Font Awesome 3.0 has been released with new icons and styles. Font Awesome, a single font of pictographic web-related icons originally designed for use with Twitter's Bootstrap, has seen all its icons recreated and optimised for 14 pixel size.

The new version of the font has also been relicensed under an SIL open font licence and MIT licence for CSS, LESS and SASS stylesheets. The licence change means that users of the font no longer have to add an attribution to their sites or applications when using it, although the developers would appreciate a mention if possible.

The re-creation of the icons was inspired by the new default of 14px sizes in Bootstrap, but the developers have also added 40 new icons, including cloud upload and download, a selection of medical-related images, beer, coffee and food icons, and a collection of angle and double angle direction icons. The medical icons were likely inspired by font creator Dave Gandy's work at Kyruus, a healthcare startup in Boston where he works as lead product designer.

A selection of new styles allow the icons to be scaled or animated or used as elements in pull quotes. Despite the increase in icons and styles, version 3.0 is 21 per cent smaller according to the developers, but if users need to slim down even further the icnfnt.com site allows them to select a subset of the Font Awesome 3.0 icons and create their own icon font kit as needed.

(djwm)