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More (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers

Desktop wallpapers are always nice to look at and to draw inspiration from. They may provide with some fresh perspective and offer you some eye-candy for tedious coffee breaks. We are regularly hunting for free high-quality icons, fonts and wallpapers and present them to you, so you don’t need to search for them. As long as we find something beautiful, interesting or useful, we let you know in our posts. And now it’s time for some sweet wallpapers designer’s toolbox.

In this post we present more (really) stunning desktop wallpapers related to typography, photography, illustrations, HDR as well as some abstract and fantasy-related wallpapers. Hopefully, everybody will find something interesting for his or her desktop. All wallpapers can be downloaded for free.

You can also scan through the following posts:

• (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers
• (Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos
• 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures

Don’t forget: until 21th of May you can participate in Smashing Texture Contest, take a photo, send it to us and win a professional digital camera. We have received over 200 entries so far.

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Useful Podcasts For Designers And Developers

Podcasting is an engaging medium that is available in both audio and video formats. Podcasts often refer to audiocasts, but now with iPods and other media players being able to play video, videocasts are just as popular. A handful of web design podcasters deliver both audio and video formats. Some do so through the same subscription, others separate the two.

Audio podcasts are a great way to stay informed about web design news, learn about emerging technologies, listen to discussions, and continuously learn about the ever-changing landscape of web design — on your way to work or before you go to bed. Videocasts are great at showing step by step tutorials, or delivering visually rich presentations. Many of the long running successful podcasts have communities built around the show. Forums and detailed show notes are usual for a podcast that regularly serves its community. The time span of how long a podcast exists often indicates its level of quality and professionalism.

We’ve amassed a collection of podcasts that are either directly about web design, or would be helpful to a web designer. If you’re interested in more podcasts try searching through Odeo or iTunes. There are quite a few web development podcasts, and a few niche topic web design podcasts, not covered in this roundup. Following is a list of useful podcasts for web design professionals.

You may want to take a look at the article

• Professional Web Design Forums which covers forums dedicated to web designers and developers.

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Free Fonts Of The Month: Freebooter Script, Cora Basic

Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to.

This month we are glad to present you Freebooter Script, Cora Basic Regular, Walkway and Karabine. Please read the license agreements carefully — they can change from time to time.

• Free Fonts Of April features GrauBlau and Nevis.
• You can find over 80 more free fonts in our section Fonts.

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Sexy, Bold And Experimental Typography

Sometimes typography is all you need to communicate your ideas effectively. Graphics can support the type or type can support the graphics, but to deliver the message precisely, you need to make sure your type is expressive enough, your design is distinctive enough and the composition is strong enough. The results are sometimes crazy, sometimes artsy, sometimes beautiful, but often just different from things we’re used to. Thus designers explore new horizons and we explore new viewing perspectives which is what inspiration is all about.

This post showcases over 70 examples of sexy, bold and experimental typography. Some examples are typographic posters, some are typographic illustrations and some are just sketches with type. In any case, you will hopefully find some inspiration for your future works.

Feel free to check out our previous typography-related posts:

• Breathtaking Typographic Posters with over 50 typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters as well as a number of further references,
• Typography In Motion presents some excellent examples of typography embedded into movies and videos,
• The Showcase of BIG Typography with over 35 examples of big, “loud” and yet elegant typography in web design.

So what can be achieved out of simple letters and symbols? Please be patient, some screenshots are huge.

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Where Do You Draw Inspiration From?

Getting creative is part of our job. Whatever project we are working on, at some point we need to come up with some nice starting point — some fresh idea which we could explore further, build upon and refine until we have a polished, perfect result. Although having an idea is at least as important as implementing it properly, without inspiration and innovation you just can’t get anything done.

And this is where it sometimes gets messy. In fact, drawing inspiration is not as easy as we used to think of it. Inspiration is not just observing something, analyze it and implement it in one or another way in your work. Inspiration is much more: there is a fine line between inspiration and imitation which is easy to cross and as easy to mix up.

Inspiration means captivate an idea and develop it further. Imitation means identify an idea and use it. As a professional when getting creative, you need to make sure that you pick the right path to follow.

Noell Hyman draws inspiration from magazines; stick-it-notes contain some ideas she might want to work upon later.

So how do you actually come up with new ideas (apart from reading Smashing Magazine, of course)? Where do you draw inspiration from? Do you have some bulletproof approaches against creativity blocks?

We would like to hear your opinion. Let us know in the comments!

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Smashing Textures Contest

Take a shot, send us the image and win a Canon Digital Rebel camera. In web design textures are needed in background-images and header graphics. Graphic designers use textures to transport some concrete aspects of real-life into the digital presentation. Textures are also used to create an atmosphere which fits to the main topic or idea of the site.

Such textures are usually extracted from photos. In fact, everybody can create them — apart from a camera no special devices or tools are necessary. You just need to find a texture and you make a shot of it. And here is where our readers come in. With this contest we want to encourage you to go out, take a camera with you, shot textures and send them to us.

Reward: one of participants of Smashing Texture contest will win the Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Lens. The winner will be determined randomly.

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