DEV Community

I'm Phuc
I'm Phuc

Posted on

I built my own icon platform after getting frustrated with FontAwesome — here's how each feature came to life

I'm a 20-year-old student from Vietnam. I built Viconic (viconic.io.vn) alone, with no team and no sponsor. Every single feature came from a real frustration I had while building web projects.
Here's the story.

It started with FontAwesome

When I first learned web development, I used FontAwesome like everyone else. But the kit builder was confusing — I couldn't figure out how to generate a CDN link on my own. I ended up having to go to cdnjs.com just to grab a script tag. The free tier also had very few icons.
At the time, I had no idea SVGrepo or Iconify even existed.
So I started building my own thing.

Every feature came from a real problem

SVG injection instead of font icons

My first approach was to use icomoon to generate font icons. But I quickly ran into a problem — font-based icons can't render multicolor icons accurately. Colors get lost or merged.
So I switched to SVG injection. Icons load directly via a custom tag from the CDN, similar to how Iconify works. Bundle size stays at 0KB since nothing is bundled — icons are fetched at runtime.

Kit builder for offline use

I study at a university where the internet connection is often unstable or completely unavailable. I needed a way to prepare a set of icons in advance and use them offline — similar to icomoon's kit system, but without the font limitations.
So I built a kit builder. You pick the icons you need, give the kit a name, and Viconic generates a custom CDN URL for that kit. Load that URL once and all your icons are ready — even offline after the first load.

Inline SVG editor

Every time I needed to inspect or quickly tweak an icon, I'd open a new tab and go to svgviewer.dev. After doing this dozens of times, I got tired of it.
So I built an SVG editor directly into Viconic. You can adjust colors, size, and preview the result in real time — without leaving the page.

Fast mode

Sometimes I just need to copy an icon quickly. Opening a detail modal every single time felt unnecessary.
So I added fast mode. When enabled, clicking an icon copies it instantly — no modal, no extra steps.

What Viconic has now — completely free

  • 200,000+ icons from Lucide, Tabler, FontAwesome, and many more
  • CDN + npm package with zero bundle size
  • SVG injection via custom tag
  • Kit builder — create your own icon set with a custom CDN URL
  • Inline SVG editor — adjust colors and size directly in the browser
  • Copy as JSX, SVG, HTML, or Tailwind class in one click
  • Fast mode — click to copy instantly
  • Individual page for each icon — download SVG or PNG

Why I'm sharing this

I'm not sharing this because Viconic is perfect. It's still in open beta and there's a lot left to build.
I'm sharing because every feature on this list came from a real problem I personally ran into. No market research, no competitor analysis — just solving my own frustrations one by one.
If you've ever felt like existing icon tools were either too complex, too limited on the free tier, or just not designed for how you actually work — Viconic might be worth a try.
👉 https://viconic.io.vn
I'd love honest feedback — what's missing, what's broken, what would make you actually use this over SVGrepo or Iconify.

Top comments (0)