When you bookmark a page on a website it is added to a selection of other favourite websites in your bookmark window. Some have icons and others don’t. Why is this? They have a favicon in their root directory.
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What is a favicon?
A favicon is just that a “fav” icon so when a visitor bookmarks your website it has a recognizable branded icon next to the website link. This may seem like a pretty pointless part of your website but you would be wrong.
Recommended design method
If your company logo has been designed well then it will pretty easy to simply it into a favicon. Just look at the special features of the log, in the above example the O in Solv is considered to be the prominent feature of the corporate identity, MigSolv copyright 2013) so it taken into photoshop and seperated from the rest of the logo.
Why it is important
A favicon helps your user to identify your website quickly & easily and if your company doesn’t have one it looks like one of two things. A) You don’t finish your website which might also represent your company’s image that you don’t finish things & B) You don’t understand technology trends properly.
Recommended favicon size
The size of the favicon is usually 32px x 32px.
How to create in photoshop
You have two options, either use the logo you have now, go to edit > …image size and change the pixel size to 32 x 32.
Save with .ico
Once you are happy with your icon make sure to save it as a filename.ico. This isn’t a drop down file type so you will have to manually enter the .ico at the end of the file name.
Upload to root folder
Lastly upload your completed favicon to your websites root folder and web browsers should then pick up that you have one. Your mission is complete! Good job soldier.
Alternative Free favicon generator
If you are not an owner of photoshop ( or GIMP ) or just not confident enough in the program then you can use this free favicon generator which does the job for you.
Designing a favicon
If you would like a professional designed favicon for your website please feel free to contact me using the contact button and I will give you a very reasonable quote. Happy creating folk! 🙂