Setting different icons for each section of your forum?

I often see some forums where the owner has set a different pair of icons for each section, on some forums it may look neat, or on others it may make the forum look bloated. Would do this on your forum, why or why not, and what are your thoughts?

Here is an example of what I am talking about:

 

I don't see the point, it just clutters the forum list up, but I admit it can look kind of neat when the sizes of the images are just right and fit in with the style, etc.

 

Yea I agree, and it makes your forum load slower than usual at times. It does look neat when everything goes together and matches up perfectly, but I wouldn't bother to be honest.. just a waste of time.

 

I have to agree, and to me its not appealing at all. Makes the forum look "fake" to me for some reason. I rather stick to normal icons.

 

I have seen it look good on some forums (like they made custom icons to match the color scheme of the skin).
I would think it was too tacky on my own forum though.

 

Yea I have seen it look good on some forums, here is one forum that put it to good use: http://www.sevenforums.com/

 

Looks to busy and distracting to me.

 

Hey Blake, mind elaborating a bit more? The forum I linked to or the screenshot, what makes it distracting to you?

 

Setting different icons for each forum would be a big pain. So I don't do it. It can also just make a forum look messy and unappealing if done wrong. However, in your examples, the forums looked nice, neat, and tidy. So, it works in some cases. A scenario in which icons for each forum might work is for an anime/manga forum for different anime and manga. The main character's head or whatever could be used as the icon, or something like that.

 

I hate seeing it to be honest, on phpBB its easy enough to add but it comes across as childish IMO

 

Why do you think it's childish?

 

Because firstly, they are usually free icons people use. No thought has been put in to them in terms of matching the theme ect and basically the only sites that you see them on are usually free hosted ones run by kids.

 

That's probably true actually

 

I'm with Ash on this. It's a cool idea when you work it out on paper, but it seems like the images are always too big and you sometimes can't even tell if there are new posts or not. But like Ash said, if done properly, they can be pretty cool. I remember this being a popular idea with advert/promo forums and it's pretty cool, it kind of helps a person identify what the section is actually about with a visual as well as description. So sometimes they can have their uses.

 

That's a good point. In some cases, somebody might not fully understand the description/title of a section and need extra explanation.

 

I've always thought it looks really tacky. Especially since most of the time the images are different sizes and shapes and mess up the forum layout, and it's hard to tell what forums are read and unread at a glance. I prefer just having one icon across all forums.

 

I agree, and I know exactly what you mean that's why I prefer the regular layout for forum icons, and not having different sets for each section.

And I also agree to this, it can be helpful in many ways such as above.

 

I think it looks very tacky.

 

why do you think it looks tacky?

 

There's not really an explanation, it's just what I think when I see them. Ruins the flow of a nice theme I guess.