Posts tagged freebies

The year is slowly coming to an end and we’re glad to present to you a festive icon set to inspire you in your designs. In this post we present a minimalist collection of 20 free festive vector (.EPS) icons created by offset media. The pack includes color and grayscale versions. The pack includes mostly Christmas related icons, such us the gingerbread man, nutcracker, snowman and the very well-known fir tree.

Feel free to also have a look at some of our previous Smashing Christimas icon sets: Free Smashing Christmas Icon Set by Icon Eden (2009) and Free Smashing Christmas Icon Set by SoftFacade (2008).

Download the Icon Set for Free!

The pack is completely free to use in personal and commercial projects without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word.

• large preview
• download the free icon set (.zip, 665 Kb)

Behind the Design

As always, here are some insights from the designer:

“Like any design studio, here at offset media, we prefer to create our own festive greeting cards to give to clients. This year I had a very clear vision of the overall look I wanted, a single white festive character on a solid red background.

Knowing the look, but unsure of what character to use, I ended up creating a bunch of icons to choose from. Once we were happy with the card design (choosing the snowman), we had all these unused icons lying about, and being someone who does not likes things going to waste, I decided to share them with others who could possible make use of them!”

 —  George Neocleous (aka GeoNeo) is a full-time designer and illustrator, who works at London-based design studio offset media and blogs (sporadically) at Geoneo’s Blog.

Thank you, George. We appreciate your work and your good intentions!

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Today we are delighted to release another freebie for our design community. This set contains over 80 original high quality vector files designed by the team at Vecteezy. These masterfully created, hand drawn organic elements are saved as Illustrator 10 EPS files and are perfect to add a touch of nature to any design project. The set includes items like swirly vines and weeds, Hawaiian flowers, Japanese cherry blossoms, butterflies, and much more!

Download the Collection for Free!

The elements contained in this collection are free for personal and commercial use. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word or give it a tweet or share it on Facebook! You may modify the file as you wish but please do not redistribute them elsewhere without written permission from Smashing Magazine and Vecteezy.

• A High Resolution Preview
• Download The Set For Free (.zip, 8.8 Mb)

Behind the Design

As always, here are some insights from the designer:

“By nature, Web design is a decidedly “indoorsy” activity. Maybe that’s why we love opportunities to work with the organic! This vector set allows you to design with nature’s paintbrush. Inspired by some of our favorite parts of the great outdoors, these elements will add a natural feel to your projects.

We don’t always have the privilege of walking through a sunny meadow or feeling fallen leaves crunch under our feet. But hopefully these organic vectors will bring a bit of that serenity indoors and allow you to add a touch of nature to your next design project. Enjoy!”

Thank you, guys. We appreciate your work and your good intentions!

(il) (vf)

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Updating your Twitter profile can give you really unnecessary headaches. In today’s post, we proudly present to you a Twitter UI GUI template, designed by Shelby White which has exclusively been released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. As usual, the theme is absolutely free to use in private and commerical projects.

Download the Template for Free!

The template is released as freeware. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the template as you wish.

• Large Preview (.png)
• Download the .zip-package (zip, 0,4 Mb)
• release post on designer’s website
• download from the designer’s site

Behind the Design

As always, here are some insights from the designer:

“Time after time I dealt with the headache of updating my Twitter profiles. After searching thoroughly for an alternative to editing live, it was clear that there weren’t any great solutions or intentions by anyone to create a pixel-perfect template for anyone to use. Not to mention, a template that would remain up-to-date as the website evolved.

This PSD includes grouped elements by name respective of their location in the HTML of Twitter.com. The profile images utilize smart objects to ease the pain of changing images. Update the image once and it will proportionally scale the images across the whole PSD. Hope this template makes mocking up your profile a lot easier. Enjoy!”

Thank you, Shelby White. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

When we started Smashing Magazine, we didn’t expect anything. We didn’t have a grand master plan for a successful online magazine for designers and developers. We created something that we found useful and that we thought others would find useful, too. We did not lose focus, we relied on instinct more than once, we stayed patient, and we pulled the occasional night shift. That was 2006.

And then you came along.

You have passed the word along, left comments, dropped us emails. You let us know that we matter. You let us know that we are doing something meaningful. And you let us know that our humble work deserved your attention. And we listened — carefully.

Five years have passed, and the magazine has changed. That small, obscure blog of list posts and round-ups has evolved into a professional publication with a publishing policy, editorial structures and a house style guide. The Smashing family no longer has only two members, but rather a dedicated team of experienced authors, research assistants, expert advisors, editors and proofreaders.

We all do our best to bring you the trusted advice, techniques, tutorials, resources and opinions that Smashing Magazine is known for nowadays and that the Web design community around the world has come to rely on.

Smashing Magazine is a quality-obsessed, passionate team, but it is also you: you and every single reader who has been reading Smashing Magazine for all these years. Thank you for being with us; thank you for your support, criticism and encouragement over all these years. We could not exist without you.

A Smashing Magazine Anniversary Treat

Today, Smashing Magazine turns five. It’s hard to believe that the years have passed so quickly. Many things have changed, but when we look back, we realize how wonderful and sometimes even intoxicating the journey has been so far. And you — who made us what we are today — deserve a special thank-you.

To honor the occasion, we have a humble gift for you: the free “Best of Smashing Magazine” Anniversary eBook.

The eBook is available in PDF, ePUB and Mobipocket formats. This eBook is our gift to you for your support, criticism and encouragement over all these years. We’d like it to be your very own memory box of your last five years with Smashing Magazine — something perhaps to bring back memories a couple of years from now. We’d like you to have a part of Smashing Magazine with you when you are on the go.

What’s in the eBook?

The eBook contains the best articles that have been published on Smashing Magazine in the last five years — and by “best,” we mean the most useful, most interesting or most inspiring. The articles have been carefully edited, proofread and updated for your convenience and reading pleasure on your eBook reader.

It discusses usability issues and the principles of effective Web design. It covers the guidelines for beautiful and effective typography, and it spotlights methods of responsive Web design. In addition, you’ll learn how to master professional Photoshop techniques, explore storytelling in your designs, and focus on three key areas to polish your content strategy. Never thought that harmony between designers and developers was possible? Dig in to see how the two camps can collaborate productively and learn from each other.

Table of Contents

• “Thirty Usability Issues to Be Aware Of”  —  Vitaly Friedman
• “Ten Principles of Effective Web Design”  —  Vitaly Friedman
• “Clever JPEG Optimization Techniques”  —  Sergey Chikuyonok
• “Typographic Design Patterns and Best Practices”  —  Smashing Editorial team
• “Ten Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines”  —  Dmitry Fadeyev
• “Setting Up Photoshop for Web and iPhone Development”  —  Marc Edwards
• “The Ails of Typographic Anti-Aliasing”  —  Tom Giannattasio
• “Mastering Photoshop: Noise, Textures and Gradients”  —  Marc Edwards
• “Better User Experience With Storytelling”  —  Francisco Inchauste
• “The Beauty of Typography, Writing Systems and Calligraphy”  —  Jessica Bordeau
• “Web Designers, Don’t Do It Alone”  —  Paul Boag
• “Making Your Mark on the Web Is Easier Than You Think”  —  Christian Heilmann
• “Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How to Use It”  —  Kayla Knight
• “I Want to Be a Web Designer When I Grow Up”  —  Michael Aleo
• “Persuasion Triggers in Web Design”  —  David Travis
• “What Font Should I Use?”  —  Dan Mayer
• “The Design Matrix: A Powerful Tool for Guiding Client Input”  —  Bridget Fahrland
• “Why User Experience Cannot Be Designed”  —  Helge Fredheim
• “Dear Web Design Community, Where Have You Gone?”  —  Vitaly Friedman
• “Make Your Content Make a Difference”  —  Colleen Jones
• “Two Cats in a Sack: Designer-Developer Discord”  —  Cassie McDaniel
• “Print Loves Web”  —  Mark Cossey

Previews of the Smashing Anniversary eBook

Take a look at the following preview to get a taste of the eBook’s contents.

Use the practical and inspiring articles in the Smashing Anniversary eBook to refuel, and get those brilliant ideas rolling again!

Download It Now For Free

Again, you can download the eBook in for free in PDF, ePUB and Mobipocket formats.

• Download your free copy from Apple’s iTunes Store
• Download your free copy from Smashing Magazine’s server (.zip, 55 Mb).

Please note that due to differing publishing policies around the world, downloading via iTunes is currently available only to customers with an iTunes account in the US, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France and Germany. We are working hard to make future Smashing Magazine publications available to all of our readers around the world.

Cheers, dear friends. And here is to the next five years!

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011.