The 2008 GUI Championships is an international skinning and graphic design competition where graphic artists from around the world compete for thousands of dollars in prizes. This year, one of the most popular categories was Icon Packages. There were tons of submissions and after many hours of reviewing and judging, the nominees for Most Usable and Most Original have been decided.
These icon packs, along with other desktop skins, are available for download at www.guichamps.com. These nominees represent some of the best icon creations this year.
Most Usable Icon Packs
Blue Memory 2 by ditu
Blue Memory 2 by dtu is an outstanding icon package that is very complete. Full Vista support, if these icons showed up as the default Windows 7 icons, I wouldn't have thought twice.
Eliminator IP by TYCUS
Eliminator by TYCUS is one of the most complete icon packages in the contest. Bonus points for supporting all kinds of files including Office 2003 and Office 2007.
Evolution by xiaomaohua
Evolution by Xiaomaohua is a somewhat traditional but with a more modern feel. One could imagine Windows 8 having icons something like this.
Growth by Skinhit
Junior by treetog
My Toy by Kingyo
Non-mainstream 2008 by iconboy
Plastic Fantastic by Tiggz
Plump by zerode
Purplesilver by kidaubis
Most Original Icon Packs
Ancient Legend by GeorgeUI
Ancient Legend by Zuo Zhiyu is one of my favorites in teh contest. Good Vista support. It makes me wish IconPackager's live folder support was a bit more flexible. The artistic quality here though is really good.
Delta by J. Aroche
Lineless Design by bingben_penGUIn
Lineless Design is one of the most original concepts in the contest. First, they are really outstanding in terms of art quality. It doesn't support Vista but the sheer creativity shown here makes this a must-have for XP users
My Toy by Kingyo
Non-mainstream 2008 by iconboy
Non-Mainstream 2008 by iconboy is one of the most complete icon packages I've seen. Bonus points for lots of file type supports. It's an excellent theme for XP and Vista.
On the road by Dooandjen_penGUIn
Plastic Fantastic by Tiggz
Plastic Fantastic by Tiggz may be the best entry of this year in my opinion. It's extremely original and extremely usable. My only gripe is that there's no Office support built into it (support for Office icons) but otherwise this is about as good as it gets.
Pure handwork by tongzhenming
STAR by zsj8679
Weird Creature by edwin_penGUIn
