We love free icons and icon sets. In the overview below we present 55 more excellent, free and professional icons for desktop and web design. Some of them can be used for both private and commercial projects. You may always use them for free in your private projects. Nevertheless, it is always worth to take a look at the license agreements — they can change from time to time.
Read more…
No, they shouldn’t. At first glance the decision to open links in new windows or not depends on the given site and the preferences of its visitors.
Read more…
The new generation of web browsers — Firefox 3, Opera 9.5 and Internet Explorer 7 — provides a feature which seems to save a lot of work for web-developers in the future, namely the Full Page Zoom. Instead of allowing users to increase and decrease the font size on a given web-site, browsers now enable users to literally scale the rendered layout including visuals and background images. Consequently, every fixed, pixel-based layout becomes “scalable”; the content area always remains within the layout box it is supposed to be in and there is no chance of producing overlapping boxes as we’ve seen in previous generations of web-browsers.
Read more…
How many creative solutions for calendar design are out there? If you take a look around you’ll find out that most calendars are designed in a “standard” linear fashion. Calendar cards usually have the same structure: the month is designed in bold while the days are placed below within a rigid grid structure. Well, it doesn’t have to be like this. In fact, there are a number of creative approaches one can consider when designing calendars.
Read more…
When it comes to web design too often perfect, colorful and boxy designs make the cut; however, the reality is different as it is hard to find objects with a perfect shape and a perfect color in our daily routine. To achieve a unique and communicative design we need to consider more creative approaches. For instance, we can draw sites by ourselves — or at least some parts of it.
Read more…
In corporate design brochures and booklets are a standard tool for promotion and advertising. They are tiny books or magazines which lay around in conference halls, offices and waiting rooms. Sometimes they contain an annual report of the company or showcase the portfolio of an artist. Brochures can also be included in CDs and DVDs; however, usually they are given away as freebies (e.g. they may contain a calendar or some poster inside).
Read more…
Quotes are used to emphasize excerpts of text. Since users almost never read but scan we need to provide them with some focus anchors to fix their attention to the most important parts of our articles. Furthermore, quotes are always used for testimonials and sometimes for blog comments. They can be styled using graphics, CSS and a little bit of JavaScript. Sometimes, creative dynamic solutions can be applied as well.
Read more…
If you’ve been following Smashing Magazine for a while, you know that almost all posts from the Monday Inspiration series are pretty colorful and eye-catching. This post is an exception. Compared to colorful designs where catchy colors help the design to stand out, in black-and-white designs the ability to stand out depends only on its ability to communicate rather than on its appealing visual presentation.
Read more…
Nowadays we can see icons everywhere, from a game console to web applications. Icons are getting more and more popular and play an important role, maybe the most important role in user interfaces. However, the resources about icon design are not that popular which is why when we have done our first steps in icon design, it was really hard to find a good starting point.
Read more…
When Leonardo Da Vinci attempted to build the world’s first robot in 1495, his inspiration had come from the ancient Greek texts of Ctesibus and Vitruvius. Likewise, Auguste Rodin cited Lorenzo Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise” as the inspiration for his famous sculpture “The Gates of Hell”. Designers and artists have traveled the world for centuries looking for those brilliant moments of inspiration.
Read more…
