I asked a colleague at work about the icon set that she used for a site so that I could use them on this site, she replied with ‘font awesome’ (thanks pam)

through that I found bootstrap.
what an awesome thing that is.

It contains a responsive, fluid and static grid
css for typograph, tables, forms, buttons, images, icons
css for awesome dropdown menus, navigation, breadcrumbs, buttons, alerts, modal windows, progress bars

and lots of cool javascript for features like transitions, carousels, tabs, popovers, etc.

all in all its a great place to start a project from.