MAKE YOUR OWN FAVICON ICON
MINI LOGO
FACES . EXPRESSIONS . SYMBOLS . ICONS
DRAWING . TOUCHSCREEN PAINTING ON iPAD, iPHONE OR GALAXY NOTE
BIG
Well, it is for its size!
What is a favicon icon?
When your web site is shown on someone's browser, a favicon is the tiny logo that sometimes appears next to it.
FAVICON stands for FAVorites ICON. At one time a favicon only appeared in a Favorites bookmark list. Of course your favicon could only go on parade if somebody bookmarked your site. Even then favicons were remarkably shy, sometimes disappearing for no apparent reason.
Favicons are now more robust. Depending on your browser, you will probably find a few in your address bar and your History list as well as your Favorites.
These tiny icons can actually be pretty useful in locating a site in a list to revisit it. Many sites don't bother with a favicon and just display the standard browser icon. They tend to disappear in the crowd!
A favicon is in effect a miniature marketing logo - knee high to a shirt button, but it does get noticed.
MAKE YOUR OWN FAVICON
Favicons now not only appear in more places. You can make your own favicon in different forms. At one time your graphic had to be an .ICO icon file. These days if you save it in a more familiar form as a .jpg, .gif, .png or .bmp, it should appear in all but a few of the older Internet Explorer browsers.
Traditional full .ICO files can hold several images at different sizes and colour depths. If you still want to go to town on one of these, there are specialised icon making apps.
For a perfectly serviceable favicon, you just need 16 x 16 pixels and 16 colours. There are online favicon makers for this basic job, but it isn't difficult to make your own favicon in a desktop art app like Photoshop or Elements.
Finding out if your favicon is on parade can be difficult because you can't do too much testing to find what makes this midget Pimpernel appear and disappear. You only have your own computer to try it on.
Never mind. If your marketing logo is distinctive enough, even if it disappears it has probably done its work. We learn to recognise images faster than words. A really striking favicon will not be forgotten.
Good luck! ... 
Make your own favicon the easy way... 
CREATING SYMBOLS Cliches . Symbol fonts
FAVICON Favicon Tutorial . Start with ABC . Pictograms . Icons . Upload favicon
(c) Valerie Beeby 1998 - 2012
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