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When a user clicks on a map what should they expect to see?
I would say a symbol for where they clicked. A pushpin seems to be the most accepted icon for generic data. Google has pushed the upside down tear drop.
What are other ideas/options and is there a place for finding professional gis oriented icon packs?
I ended up creating this,
This just popped up from the guys at map box. Clean maki icons
Scott de Jonge has released a fantastic icons font library (named Map icons) under SIL OFL / MIT Licence. Icons are available at http://map-icons.com. As any icons font, map icons are scalable and are easy to style (size, color, etc.). The original SVG file is also available as source into the github repository.
You will find a basic demo here: http://map-icons.com/demo.html and a sample screenshot below:
Individual SVG source files are available in a specific github repo.
An excellent collection here: http://mapicons.nicolasmollet.com/
(older url : http://code.google.com/p/google-maps-icons/ )
The Emergency Mapping and Crime Mapping Symbols sets are available. While the symbols have been created for specific needs the diversity of the symbols means that members outside the emergency and crime mapping community have found value in the symbol sets for their own applications. The symbols have been created in PNG formats to allow for importation into existing GIS software or to be used in Web-Mapping applications.
To learn more about the symbol sets please see the following link...
Emergency Mapping Symbology (Wayback Machine): http://emsymbology.org/index.html
Some pixel art to represent points of interest would please a lot of people:
http://www.lovepixel.idv.tw/page/main.htm
Depending on what you want to represent you could use the Open Street Map icons from http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmarender/Symbols
Have a look on http://www.sjjb.co.uk/mapicons/ It's a CC0 licence.
You can also go on OpenClipArt website http://www.openclipart.org/, not restricted to maps but there's some stuff e.g. http://www.openclipart.org/search/?query=maps, http://www.openclipart.org/search/?query=map or http://www.openclipart.org/search/?query=cartography
I was just reading an article that mentioned that Google Maps created a set of "icons [that] are familiar and understandable to people throughout the world based on the international set of pictographs created by the AIGA."
The AIGA website states:
"The complete set of 50 passenger/pedestrian symbols developed by AIGA is available for all to use, free of charge. Signs are available here in EPS and GIF formats. Additional symbol signs are available free of charge at The Noun Project."
The icons are downloadable at the link provided.
There's also the symbolstore - made in conjunction with Penn State University. Contrary to the name, the icons are free. They contain icons from various projects including maki,noun project, and others that users have contributed.
Users are also encouraged to add their own creations as well.
IconFinder has a lot of icons including mapping ones. But it's not exclusive to web mapping.
