Font Awesome vs Material Design

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Font Awesome

57K
14.7K
+ 1
21
Material Design

593
884
+ 1
14
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Font Awesome vs Material Design: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Font Awesome and Material Design are two popular design frameworks used in web development. While both frameworks offer a wide range of icons and design elements, they have key differences in terms of style, compatibility, and functionality.

  1. Icon Styles: Font Awesome provides a wide range of icons with a consistent, bold, and modern style. It focuses on providing a visually appealing set of icons that are easily recognizable and versatile in design. On the other hand, Material Design offers a more minimalist and flat style with icons that are more subtle and less detailed. Material Design icons follow a specific set of guidelines and are designed to create a cohesive visual language across different platforms.

  2. Compatibility: Font Awesome can be easily integrated into different web frameworks and libraries, making it compatible with a wide range of web development tools. It provides support for various frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, and React. On the contrary, Material Design is often associated with Google's Material Design guidelines and is primarily used within Google's ecosystem, making it more suitable for Android applications and Google related projects.

  3. Variety of Icons: Font Awesome offers a massive library of over 7,000 icons, including regular, solid, and brand icons. It covers a wide range of categories and allows developers to easily find icons that suit their needs. Material Design, on the other hand, provides a smaller but curated collection of icons that are specifically designed to fit within the Material Design guidelines. Although it has fewer icons, it ensures consistency and cohesiveness throughout the design language.

  4. Customizability: Font Awesome icons can be customized easily by changing the size, color, and style using CSS. It provides flexibility for developers to adapt the icons to their specific design requirements. Material Design icons, on the other hand, follow specific guidelines and have limited customizability. They are designed to be used in specific sizes and colors to maintain the overall visual consistency.

  5. Community and Support: Font Awesome has a large and active community of developers, providing extensive support and resources. It has a dedicated website, documentation, and online forums where developers can find answers to their queries and share their experiences. Material Design also has a community and resources, but it is relatively smaller compared to Font Awesome.

  6. Integration with Design Systems: Font Awesome icons can be easily integrated into existing design systems and libraries. It provides flexibility for designers to use the icons within their preferred design framework. Material Design, on the other hand, is more tightly integrated with its own design system, making it more suitable for projects that follow the Material Design principles from start to finish.

In summary, Font Awesome offers a wide range of customizable icons with a modern and versatile style, while Material Design provides a minimalist and cohesive set of icons following specific design guidelines. Font Awesome is more compatible and has a larger community support, while Material Design is more specifically tailored for projects within the Google ecosystem.

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Pros of Font Awesome
Pros of Material Design
  • 8
    CDN
  • 7
    CSS Styling
  • 6
    Open source
  • 0
    Easy Upgrades
  • 0
    Auto-accessibility (A11y)
  • 0
    API
  • 5
    They really set a new bar in design
  • 4
    An intuitive design
  • 3
    Simply, And Beautiful
  • 2
    Many great libraries
  • 0
    Composants

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Cons of Font Awesome
Cons of Material Design
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 2
      Sometimes, it can hang the browser

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    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Font Awesome?

    You can get vector icons and social logos on your website with it. It is a font that's made up of symbols, icons, or pictograms that you can use in a webpage, just like a font.

    What is Material Design?

    Material Design is a unified system that combines theory, resources, and tools for crafting digital experiences.

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    What companies use Font Awesome?
    What companies use Material Design?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Font Awesome or Material Design.
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    What tools integrate with Font Awesome?
    What tools integrate with Material Design?

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    What are some alternatives to Font Awesome and Material Design?
    Google Fonts
    A library of 915 free licensed fonts, an interactive web directory for browsing the library, and APIs for conveniently using the fonts via CSS and Android.
    Bootstrap
    Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.
    Ionicons
    Premium designed icons for use in web, iOS, Android, and desktop apps. Support for SVG and web font. Completely open source and MIT licensed.
    Typekit
    It is an online service which offers a subscription library of high-quality fonts. The fonts may be used directly on websites or synced via Adobe Creative Cloud to applications on the subscriber's computers.
    Typography
    It is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed. This term is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process.
    See all alternatives