Adding icon attribution to your product
Sample attribution snippets for app stores, about pages, settings panes, and marketing footers.
Why attribution matters
Most open icon libraries — including IconDrop and the underlying OpenMoji project — are free to use under a Creative Commons license that requires attribution. Honoring the attribution requirement is the polite thing to do, but it is also the legally required thing to do. The good news is that attribution is almost always trivially easy: a single line of text, placed somewhere your users could find it if they went looking, is enough.
App store listings
For an iOS or Android app, the easiest place to put attribution is the app store description. Add a single line near the bottom: "Icons: OpenMoji (CC BY-SA 4.0)." That is it. App store reviewers generally accept this and it satisfies the license requirement for the great majority of users. Some legal teams prefer the attribution to also appear inside the app — typically in a settings → about screen — which is fine and not much extra work.
About pages
On a marketing site or product about page, add a credits section near the bottom of the page. "IconDrop and OpenMoji icons are licensed CC BY-SA 4.0" is plenty. If your about page is sparse, you can fold the line into a more general credits block alongside fonts, photography, and any other licensed assets. The goal is that a reasonably motivated user could find the attribution if they went looking; you are not required to put it on the splash screen.
Settings or info screens
In a desktop or mobile product, a small "about" or "info" screen tucked under the settings is a clean home for attribution. List the open-source projects you depend on, including IconDrop and OpenMoji. Many products do this anyway for the libraries and frameworks they use; adding the icon archive to the same list is one extra row.
Documentation site footers
If you maintain a documentation site, the footer is the canonical place. Add a small credits line — "© Your Company. Icons by IconDrop / OpenMoji, CC BY-SA 4.0." Most documentation themes already include a footer credits area, which makes this a copy-paste change.
What about printed materials?
If you use IconDrop icons in printed materials — a brochure, a conference handout, a packaging insert — the license still applies. The simplest compliant approach is to add a small credits line in the back matter, the same place you would attribute photography or illustration. If the printed format is so constrained that even a single line of credits would not fit, you may host the attribution on a related website and link to it from the print piece, but err toward including the credits in print whenever you can.