All icons, illustrations and stickers uploaded to Iconfinder are manually checked by our Content reviewers. They are the ones who decide which items are approved by following our Criteria for approving content. When they notice a good pack, they have the possibility to promote it, so it appears on the 'Staff picks' section on Iconfinder. This helps the pack to get more exposure to customers.
This is how the 'Staff picks' page looks on our homepage:
Criteria for choosing Staff picks
When promoting packs, we look for content that is:
High quality. We feature content that are well-drawn. To understand how we judge the quality of a pack, check out our Quality standards.
Unique. This is artwork that stands out from the rest, be it because of a novel concept or because of the execution. We highly value content that have a personal design style. Read about how we think about Uniqueness.
Beautiful. This is content that is created with care and a lot of attention to detail. They are nice to look at, their colors are well-chosen, their shapes are harmonious. Understand what we mean by beautiful icons, illustrations and stickers in this article on Aesthetic appeal.
Related to current trends. Icons, illustrations and stickers chosen as staff picks have to be relevant to the season. For example, if it's around February 14, we would feature some Valentine's day packs that look good and are of good quality. We do not feature Christmas content in July.
You can check out all the Staff picks for inspiration and to get an idea of what we consider as high-quality content.
Benefits of being featured as Staff picks
When your content is featured as Staff picks, this has the following effects:
Receiving a boost in the item's rank in the search results. This means, icons, illustrations and stickers that have been featured as Staff picks will be appearing higher in the search results.
Being part of the Staff picks section of our website, these packs receive around 80k pageviews per month.
Customers can filter only by Staff picks when making a search. We introduced this filter at the beginning of September 2020 and it's being used by around 600 to 1000 users every month (given that its content is not that extensive yet).
These packs are automatically added to our Pinterest page. Iconfinder's Pinterest has 26k followers (and growing every day) and receives 10-15 million monthly views. This is a massive exposure that your pack can get. Pro tip: Colourful pack backgrounds get noticed more.
The Staff picked packs are also included in weekly Recommendation emails that contain icons, illustrations and stickers from designers that the customers follow.
As you can see, drawing icons, illustrations and stickers that are beautiful, stand out from the rest and are well-timed, has large rewards, so it is worth it to spend more time polishing your designs to look amazing!