Icons of the Web is a cool little app that visualizes the web’s top sites via their favicons. The larger the favicon, the more popular the site.

I was delighted to find my Brizzly icon hiding only a little ways into the pixel forest. It’s above and to the right of the MSN butterfly, nestled between SFR and the SparkFun icon. Neat!

Déjà vu! Brizzly and Forrst now have something in common: both have adopted my favicon redesigns.

The Forrst icon was particularly rewarding since I designed it using the app itself as a tool for soliciting and responding to feedback. You can read about the design process in last week’s post on the subject.

Forrst is an awesome new platform for designers and developers to share bits of what they’re working on (my buddy Pasquale created the logo and introductory graphic).

The site and accompanying illustrations are gorgeous, but I wasn’t a fan of the favicon. These alternatives were designed with feedback from the Forrst community here, here and here.

Update (July 19, 2010): Forrst now uses my redesigned icon!

The current former favicon, the logo resized on a white square:

My redesign, taking cues from the web site header:

A wooden alternative (my personal favorite):

I whipped up a userscript for those who’d like to use my alternatives, optimized for Chrome and Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension.

Firefox users can choose between the green and wooden versions by going to Tools, Greasemonkey, UserScript Commands. Forrst has adopted my green favicon as its own, so the script has been updated to apply the wooden version only.

Install Forrst Favicon Redesigned 1.1

Brizzly is my favorite web-based Twitter application. Regular readers of this blog may remember my redesign of the service’s favicon for Peter Wooley’s Brizzly Favicon Alerts script for Greasemonkey.

Shortly after the script’s debut, I was contacted by the folks at Thing Labs (they make Brizzly) to talk about integrating my icon into the app.

A few months later, a new Brizzly interface debuted. Hidden in plain sight among the numerous UI and feature improvements, my 16 square pixels of glory perched unassumingly at the top of the page.

This is why I love the Internet. If you release a compelling product, you’ll inspire users to contribute ideas, feedback, or even design assets. Keep your ear to the ground, and you’ll swiftly reap the rewards.

I love the Internet as a collaboration tool. Earlier today I nabbed an invitation to Brizzly, a promising young Twitter and Facebook client with a clean, intuitive interface and a modest set of neat features. I dug the simplicity of the interface, with one exception; the favicon’s abrasive, jagged edges.

I invited my frequent co-conspirator Peter Wooley to the service. After a few messages between us, we went to work designing and implementing an alternate icon treatment with a special notification state to let you know when new messages are available, collaborating via Dropbox.

In short order, we completed the latest addition to the favicon alerts family of user scripts, Brizzly Favicon Alerts!

Used in combination with the Faviconize Tab extension, you can easily keeps tabs on new messages in Brizzly with less screen real estate than usual.

This feature is hard to enjoy if you aren’t a Brizzly user just yet. While invites aren’t as scarce as Google Wave, I’d be happy to provide one to the first five readers who comment on this post and sound off on how much you like (or dislike) the visual refresh.

Install Brizzly Favicon Alerts 1.0