I’ve had enough people now (mainly teachers and schools) asking about printable versions of our TV-style weather symbols that I thought it was about time I made some printable vector versions available for download.

So here is the ‘School Pack’ – designed for anyone who wants simply to print out some weather symbols for kids, or perhaps use them as illustrations for children’s weather worksheets. I figured that a set of symbols as individual PDF files might be the most versatile and useful – they can be scaled up and printed poster-size if you want, or easily embedded as illustrations in other documents. …read more

I recently came across an article (albeit from last year I think) by Takamasa Matsumoto concerning the Apple ‘iCloud’ icon and the Golden Ratio. He explains that the basic shape of the cloud icon is based on four circles and both pairs of diameters are in the ratio 1:1.6. The ratio of height to length of the whole cloud shape is also 1.6 – which is ‘close to’ the Golden Ratio.

I’m someone with more than a passing interest in cloud icons, so this got me wondering…

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I was pleased to get contacted a little while back by the guy in charge of the BBC Weather website – among other things he wondered if I’d seen the new beta site, and the fact that the BBC Weather Symbols were making a return. For some reason it feels like the symbols have been gone for ages, but they’ve really only had about 3 years in the wilderness (they’d lingered on the BBC website for a few years after the 2005 relaunch, and only got replaced on the 2008 beta site).

And there they are – back again, just like an old friend!

By the looks of things they’ve had to be tweaked a bit to cope with appearing on white backgrounds, so they have made two sets depending on the background colour. Consequently white clouds appear as grey clouds from time to time, depending on where they sit. I’ll be honest – I think that’s a bit of a shame, and particularly problematic over that map, but hey – they’re such classic icons that it’s just nice to see them back. And it is a beta site after all, so I’m assuming it’s still very much ‘work in progress’.

For the true weather symbol fans, it looks like there’s a new icon for ‘drizzle’ that didn’t appear in the original set (it always used to be single raindrop, same as ‘light rain’ – now it’s a sprinkling of tiny dots). Other weather types like ‘fog’ and ‘mist’ look like they’re staying as plain text.

Also, and a bigger departure from any of the previous symbol ‘relaunches’, they seem to have introduced a complete night-time set with a crescent moon. Funnily enough, I did exactly the same when I designed the first of my own new royalty free weather symbols a few years back, and the BBC team seem to have chosen an almost identical moon phase to mine.

Nice one!

Anyway, there they are. And a very welcome development too.

As always, I’m sure the BBC Weather symbols remain the property of the BBC and they would be unlikely to allow their use elsewhere (although I’ve come across several places where they are being used fairly indiscriminately for profit).

But if you are looking for similar ‘classic’ TV-style weather icons maybe for iPhone or iPad apps, or websites of your own, and you don’t want to risk copyright infringement, then I have an ever growing range of royalty free symbol sets available for download. The ideal guilt-free alternative to ‘borrowing’ the BBC ones.

Oh, and if you’re looking for the ideal Weather Gifts for Christmas – why not check out the range of classic weather symbol t-shirts and hoodies – there’s something for men, women and kids over at the ‘Classic Weather Icons’ Spreadshirt store. You can choose from a range of symbols and also choose the colour of your t-shirt or hoodie. Great fun!

A few weeks ago I had to produce a set of bespoke animations based on my ‘old-school’ weather symbols for use in an app – each as a single sheet of individual frames that could be cycled through within the app.

Anyway – it got me thinking about the (’new’) BBC weather icons I designed back in 2005 and whether I could produce a similar set of my own with more realistic weather effects using proper particles and then animate them somehow on a web page without resorting to animated GIFs…

With any luck you’ll be able to see a little ‘light snow showers’ icon looping away on the left there.

For anyone interested, I’ll quickly explain how it’s done… …read more

I recently had a request for a special version of the ‘Window on the Weather’ icon set – basically the whole set, but without the window frame, and at a larger size. So it made sense to adapt the original artwork for Set 4 to produce a brand new weather collection (Set 6!).

Weather Symbol Set 6 comes as a full set of 42 icons, plus 10 bonus alternative icons (more on that later).

They are saved as PNG images at two sizes. Firstly there’s a set at 64×64 pixels which makes them useable from the word go. But for the first time I’ve also included a complete set at the original size (512×512 pixels) – these can be used as backgrounds, or scaled down to whatever size might be needed.

They cover the usual types of weather, and I’ve also included 10 alternate ‘night-time’ symbols without the crescent moon showing, just in case these need to be used in conjunction with real moon-phase data.

Incidentally, the clouds featured in this set are 100% Irish! (The clouds that I used for the current BBC Weather icons when I was working back in London at the Weather Centre were from photos I took in Surrey..)

Anyway. These new weather icons are available to download now. Enjoy!

Here’s a sneak peek at a brand new set of ‘realistic’ weather icons’ ideal for websites or apps.

A complete set of 40 different weather types (including night-time versions) each framed inside a recessed window that also reflects the type of weather ‘outside’ by way of various lighting effects ‘inside’. The weather views themselves are opaque, but the surrounding border has varying levels of PNG transparency – basically it means that these icons will work beautifully no matter what colour background they are placed on.

I’ve called this set ‘Window on the Weather’ – and like the traditional weather symbols sets, it’s royalty free for personal and commercial use.

By the way, if you’re looking for a free Weather API so you can build your own weather application, you could try World Weather Online, who supply worldwide weather and XML/JSON/CSV weather data feed via. their Weather API. They are also, incidentally, currently using my ‘TV-style’ weather symbols on their site right now!

To learn more about the ‘Window on the Weather’ Icon Set – click the image below…

Our famous ‘traditional’ TV-style Weather Symbols are now available on a range of gifts and clothing over at The Weather Symbol Store

Why not pop along for a huge selection of Weather Symbol T-Shirts, Mugs, Clocks and literally hundreds of Weather Symbol branded products.

The downloadable web-sized versions proved so popular I figured it might be time to branch out – so I’ve plastered some symbols on pretty much every available product over at Cafepress. There’s some pretty nifty items including iPad and iPhone cases. Plenty of perfect gift ideas for anyone who knows anyone interested in The Weather. I used to know a few meself as it happens.

Or you could simply wear your very own weather forecast for the day! Here in Ireland, I reckon anything with rain on would be a pretty safe bet.

I might add some more products at some point. Or maybe see if these ones fly off the shelves first…

You can now download a new set of our popular Weather Symbols as animated GIFs.

40 original weather icons at 4 different sizes, ideal for websites and iPhone / iPad apps.

There are now 3 different formats available – PNG with solid backgrounds, PNG with transparent backgrounds, and this new set of animated GIFs. …read more

In response to requests, I’ve created a new set of Weather Icons based on the popular first set. These symbols are essentially the same but are now all PNGs with transparency, so the icons themselves can be used more easily on maps and other backgrounds (the low-res image below shows the icons on some suggested colours).

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Over on the right there you should be seeing a little widget-like thing showing the weather forecast for Lovely Leitrim. (UPDATE: currently disabled). It’s using my own TV graphics-style Weather Icons which you can get here.

I don’t know exactly (yet) how to make it into a downloadable widget that other people could use on their own sites, but if I get time I may investigate how to package it up. At the moment it’s just hard coded into a regular text widget. And it’s also hard coded to pick up the weather forecast for Carrick-on-Shannon, so I expect the appeal might be… er… limited.

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I’ve had plenty of people visiting my site looking for weather symbols to download so I thought it was about time that I actually made some weather symbols of my own.

The problem has been that everyone has been trying to get their hands on the old BBC ones which I ‘refreshed’ slightly as part of the 2005 BBC Weather relaunch. Obviously those symbols are owned by the Beeb, but I’ve been directing people back to the Weather Centre anyway, in the sure knowledge that they won’t be allowed to use them for copyright reasons. One visitor also reported back that they were refused permission because it also might be perceived as a ‘degree of endorsement by the BBC’.

Which is entirely fair enough.

So I decided to design a set of 40 new and unique weather symbols / icons that have a kind of ‘homage to old school TV graphics’ quality to them, but which have been designed entirely from scratch and obviously haven’t taken a single point, line or vector from the originals.

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I’ve noticed quite a bit of traffic coming to my site searching for ‘Weather Symbols’ so I thought it might be an idea to upload the full set of symbols that I made for the BBC as part of the 2005 relaunch. These are based on the original designs by Mark Allen, who submitted the familiar symbols to the BBC in 1974 while still a student in Norwich, and subsequent revisions by BBC graphic designers over the years.

UPDATE: I’ve changed the little preview of all the BBC symbols, due to increasing numbers of visitors deciding to snoop about and pinch the images for themselves. Tut tut.

The new set of symbols were redrawn in Illustrator and converted to PNG’s for use in Metra’s Weatherscape system which drives the graphics for all of the BBC’s weather graphics, both the realtime 3D forecasts and all of the web content too. The main changes are to the raindrop, the basic cloud outline and the colour of the lightning bolt. I had designed several possible replacement symbol sets as part of the initial pitch, but in the end there was no reason to change the classic icons – other than a couple of cosmetic tweaks. …read more