The internet is littered with guides telling you to generate twelve favicon variants. In 2026, you need exactly three files for full browser and device coverage. Everything else is legacy noise.
Icon fonts had a good run. For nearly a decade they were the way to ship scalable glyphs on the web. But by 2026 the numbers are unambiguous: SVG icons win on every metric that matters.
Choosing an icon library used to be simple—grab Font Awesome and move on. In 2026 the landscape is far richer, and picking the wrong set means either bloated bundles or hours of redrawing missing glyphs mid-sprint.
Every year the pixel pendulum swings—but 2026 is different. Instead of a single dominant aesthetic, three distinct movements are running in parallel, and knowing when to deploy each one will separate polished products from the rest.