I think if modern jobs involved charging across a battlefield to smash someone’s skull in with an oversized cleaver, Ikea would be selling flat-packing shields made of aluminum and plywood. They’d collapse into kindling at the lightest blow, but you could get four and a hotdog for $20.

This icon set imagines the reverse of that situation: if medieval craftsmen made shields now, they’d have machine-stamped creased edges and shiny gradients everywhere.

These icons are nicely varied and have good colors, but they suffer badly from being created as vector art. They look decent at 128px, but at any smaller size they’re completely muddled. There was apparently no attempt made to touch them up.

Still… shields are kickass. If you don’t get this, you were probably never a prepubescent boy. I don’t know why you didn’t choose to be one and I’m sure it’s turned out wonderful, but I’d rather have shields. They’re kickass, you know.

Armory is available for Windows and OS X for personal use. By Steven W. Smith.