What is a Favicon?

So what is a favicon? The word Favicon is a short term for Favorite Icon. It’s associated with a website and is used when the website is bookmarked. It’s also the icon that you will see in a web browser. It’s another piece of branding for your business. I use Google Chrome as my browser. Chrome has a tab across the top of the site for each page you have opened and on that tab the favicon is clearly displayed. If you look at the image below you will see the tabs for 6 websites, along with their favicon. As this is about branding you should be using something that is associated with your business, such as your logo. A favicon is an extremely small image so it’s important to use something that will have meaning and will look as substantial as can be with such a small size.

To get ideas for your business favicon take a look at the samples in the image. Facebook uses their “f” icon. This is a well known icon that Facebook uses … well, they use it almost everywhere. The same with the last one of the tabs, Google. I know that I see this icon many times throughout the day. Note that these favicons are both fairly solid color.

The second and third tabs in the image are for two of our websites. I had to be a bit innovative with the logos for these two businesses. The favicon I created for nataliealaimo.com is a part of our logo, which I’ve manipulated. Look on our site and you will see that the main part of the logo is the nai initials. If I used this as the favicon it would be lost because the letters would be too small. I decided to take the star that forms the dot over the “i”, but I reversed the colors making the star white, giving it a red background. This way it’s more prominent as a favicon. The favicon is part of our branding as it is a piece of our logo and uses the corporate colors.

How to Create A Favicon

Favicons are not difficult to create. A favicon is a graphic file usually 16 x 16 pixels. It can be a number of file types, including .gif, .png, .jpg, however it is best to use an .ico because these have better browser support. To create a favicon go to http://www.faviconer.com/. Here you can draw your image (not really recommended), or you can upload your image. Follow the instructions and download your favicon. It’s really very easy.

If you need a graphic created for your favicon, check with your designer or we’ve used Heshan Udunawara at www.dsynit.com and found the company to be very good.

How can you upload your favicon. We use WordPress, and we use the search engine optimized Thesis Theme for WordPress. Uploading was very easy for me. Log into your website and go to the Dashboard. Mouse-over “Thesis” and click on “Favicon Uploader”. From the Thesis Favicon Uploaded either drag your graphic into the box, or click on “Select Favicon” to upload your file. Once it’s uploaded, it’s done! Now check out how your favicon looks.

Did you get your favicon created? Hop on over to our Facebook Page and share it with us. We’d love to see it.