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Free Icons, Photoshop Brushes and a WordPress Theme

By Smashing Editorial, December 29th, 2008 in Freebies | 134 Comments | Forum

We are definitely not Santa Claus, but we love to release high-quality sets and themes for free. And, of course, we do have some beautiful and unusual and (hopefully) useful presents for the upcoming New Year’s Eve. Today we are glad to release three icon sets, one Photoshop brushes set and one exclusive WordPress-theme. A couple of more presents will be released over the next days. Happy New Year, folks!

Viewport Wordpress Theme

Viewport, a free Wordpress theme created by Paul Bennett is focused around a clean and simple, content based layout. The aim is to grab the user’s attention and draw them straight into the content. On the single post page the content is laid out clearly in full, with post controls and a widget-enabled sidebar. The theme also allows the blog owner to change the background image and color, and the image of the ‘Where Next?’ page.

Download the theme for free!

The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.

Motivation behind the design

Here are some insights from the designer himself:

The main idea behind Viewport was to present the user with a viewport showcasing the bloggers posts in a graphic form. There has been a recent trend to break away from conventional blog design, and Viewport aims to further extend that by using imagery to complement the post content. It particularly suits the creative market, providing a good platform to showcase projects and ideas.

As with all new sites or themes, it’s best to start off with some sketches of ideas. This one was fairly straight forward, as there aren’t any fancy graphics or complex containers. All we’re doing is focusing on the image related to the post. As such the framework of the theme was constructed from scratch in an afternoon. It was then a case of building up the code required to display the images, and allow the user to customize the layout.

The underlying code used on the front page is a lightly modified version of Coda Slider by Niall Doherty [ndoherty.com], which allows for left and right navigation and cross-linking if needed. It has the ability to provide seamless transitions when sliding a large number of panels with graphics, which meant it was the perfect choice for this application.

Known issues: image placement sometimes doesn’t place nice with Internet Explorer 6, so it’s best to user version 7 or better if IE is your flavor.

Thanks, Paul!

Messy Watercolor Photoshop Brushes Set

In the past we have featured Franz Jeitz’s work already (he designed a couple of desktop wallpapers for us) and the response from our community was really great. So when Franz suggested to do something together we were quick to respond. The result is a set of Messy Watercolor Photoshop Brushes, released exclusively via Smashing Magazine.

The set has 12 brushes at a resolution of 2300px which results in an .abr file of the size 27.3Mb.

Behind the design

Here are some insights from Franz himself:

“Like many people I have an ever-growing library of photoshop brushes. My all-time favourites are those that have a grunge feeling to them. At first I only collected high resolution photoshop brushes, but ever since I started my own design blog at www.fudgegraphics.com I made my own and shared them with the design community. So it is my pleasure to release the “Messy Watercolour Brushes 1″ exclusively on Smashing Magazine.

The set includes 12 brushes ranging from 2156px up to 2294px. I suggest experimenting with the brushes to discover the full potential of this set . Open a blank canvas and start painting on individual layers. Play with colours and blending modes until you’re happy with the result. What I like most about watercolour brushes is the endless opportunities. You could complete a design using only the brushes. Or you could overlay them on text or vectors to give them a more organic feel. You may even combine them with different gradients. Whatever you do I hope you have fun with them. For more Hi-Res photoshop brushes please visit the Freebies Section on fudgegraphics.com.

Unfortunately people stuck on Photoshop versions prior to CS1 won’t be able to use these brushes as they are simply too large. Don’t worry though. The source files used to make them will be released shortly on Smashing Magazine as a texture pack.”

Thanks, Franz!

Pacman Returns Icon Set

We have found the Russian design studio Turbomilk a long time ago. Denis Kortunov and his team published a couple of truly useful articles related to icons design. We’ve been impressed by thte quality of their work and contacted them, asking to design an unusual and creative icon set. We’ve discussed what exactly we would like to have and let the designers do the magic. In the end the result was a set of unusual avatars, similar to the legendary PacMan. We love the icons, and hopefully so are you!

The set “Pacman Returns” contains 11 high-quality icons (including RSS and “Smashing Pacman”-icons) that you can use for free in your private and commercial projects - without any restrictions whatsoever.

preview
.png-icons (.zip, 0.45 Mb)
icons for Mac (.zip, 0.8 Mb)
icons for Win (.zip, 1.1 Mb)

Nurture Social Icon Set

This is definitely one of the last social icon sets we release here, on Smashing Magazine. Since we’ve released a lot of “social” sets throughout 2008, we decided to not release such sets in the future – unless the quality is truly outstanding. The latter is the case in David Leggett’s social icon set called “Nurture”. We just couldn’t reject David’s great work which is why we release it in this post, even although some commenters may not like it.

“Nurture” is a Social Icon Pack that was designed for digital creatives who want to add a unique, lively, and green touch to their blogs and other web-projects. The set includes 10 icons featuring the logos of popular social bookmarking sites. The set was designed with a fresh, lively, green look in mind. The pack includes 512×512, 256×256, 128×128, and 64×64 icons in .png format. It can be used for free in any commercial or private projects with no restrictions, but the set itself may not be resold, sublicensed, rented, transferred or otherwise made available for use.

Behind the design

Here are some insights from David himself:

“I’m a long time follower of SM, and have taken my fair share of freebies from the community. Rather than release these on Tutorial9.net, I would like to make these icons as widely available as possible. For me, this as a small way I can give back to the folks who have helped me along the way.”

Thanks, David!

Calendar Icons for 2008, 2009 and 2010

Doug Cloud created a handy set of icons that you can use on your blog to display the current date. There are 15 available themes for the calendar icon, for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. All files are available in .png.

download the .png-icons (.zip, 0.1 Mb)

Thank you very much, Doug! We appreciate your efforts.

And thank you!

We really do love the web design community. Everybody helps each other, everybody supports each other. We are proud to be part of it! And we would like to express sincere gratiture to all designers and developers out there who contribute to the web design community and help us all to make the Web a better place. Thank you!

Published in Freebies, December 29th, 2008
Tags: downloads, free, Freebies

1.

amahony (December 29th, 2008, 6:14 am)

thanks ! :)
happy new year!
2.

Roberto (December 29th, 2008, 6:16 am)

You guys are the best! Happy 2009.
3.

Lukasz Bachur (December 29th, 2008, 6:17 am)

…and a lot of great articles in 2009!
4.

Jean-Baptiste (December 29th, 2008, 6:18 am)

Happy New Year !
5.

Mohsen (December 29th, 2008, 6:18 am)

Thanks! I love Pacman Returns Icon Set
6.

Nogmic (December 29th, 2008, 6:43 am)

very nice… some add from me if you wish to add twitter buttons like from Link [www.TwitterButtons.com]
7.

Andrew (December 29th, 2008, 6:49 am)

thank you :) Happy New Year 2009.
8.

Atomised: the web design co-operative (December 29th, 2008, 6:51 am)

Sweet Wordpress theme. Thanks guys!
9.

BY M_EnES (December 29th, 2008, 7:06 am)

thanks for your all works smashing team
10.

Ben Jacob (December 29th, 2008, 7:06 am)

Thanks for coming back Pacman ! I liked the Nurture Social Icon Set too, It would be good if they have provided the blank PSD template to expand the icon set.
11.

R. Sebastian (December 29th, 2008, 7:11 am)

Thanks! The Pacman and Social icons are really welcom!
12.

Dan Massicotte (December 29th, 2008, 7:14 am)

I’m not sure I’m surprised that the Pac-Man icons are free, but the calendar ones look really cute!

Thanks!
13.

Steven (December 29th, 2008, 7:24 am)

What’s the name of that editor in the first image in this page (labeled “Behind the scenes”?
14.

Abdel (December 29th, 2008, 7:25 am)

Goody gumdrops !! Happy new year everyone \o/
15.

GSP (December 29th, 2008, 7:26 am)

That Wordpress theme sure is different… Great for a small site but wonder how it will perform with a decent sized (10+) page site.

BTW - Thanks to everyone at SmashingMagazine for all the great content in 2008! Keep it up!
16.

Umut Muhaddisoglu (December 29th, 2008, 7:55 am)

Icons & brushes are great. Thanks.
17.

koffiekitten (December 29th, 2008, 7:57 am)

wow, great wp theme there! happy new year to smashingmagzine :)
18.

crypta (December 29th, 2008, 8:30 am)

happy new year!!!! to all
19.

Sal Azad (December 29th, 2008, 8:41 am)

Really Really Big Thanx! and Happy New Year!!!
20.

WebAgentur Körbler (December 29th, 2008, 8:41 am)

Great Wordpress theme, how is the preview in the theme be created?

mario
21.

steve (December 29th, 2008, 8:45 am)

These brushes could come in handy! thanks!
22.

River Girl (December 29th, 2008, 9:22 am)

Thanks - this is great!
23.

Shy Anne (December 29th, 2008, 9:52 am)

I’m not sure how I feel about the WP theme, but it’s definitely pretty.
24.

kimee (December 29th, 2008, 9:58 am)

Viewport Wordpress Theme is clean, simple and also very interactive theme.
many thanks for sharing great theme~
25.

Steve Mullen (December 29th, 2008, 10:06 am)

Thanks again guys!

@Steven: The editor used is Coda, my editor of choice.

Steve Mullen Creative
26.

Don (December 29th, 2008, 10:11 am)

The Pacman icons are awesome. Thanks!
27.

macias (December 29th, 2008, 11:18 am)

pacman bites !
28.

Evan Riley (December 29th, 2008, 1:41 pm)

Very cool, can’t wait to use the new wordpress theme to test things.
29.

DKumar M. (December 29th, 2008, 2:18 pm)

Nice Theme Paul, I like the clean and plain design. Mostly useful for online portfolios and galleries.

The Pacman Icons also smashing the show…. Thanks guys… Happy New year !!

Dkumar M.
30.

Sara (December 29th, 2008, 2:33 pm)

I love the vintage feel of some of those icons. Thanks!
31.

Jigar (December 29th, 2008, 8:21 pm)

Thanks to SM…..

ALways sharing a good content to its Readers…

Happy New Year to ALL - Readers..
32.

Vatsal (December 29th, 2008, 10:00 pm)

wonderful work guys…. hats off…..
33.

Daniel P. Long (December 29th, 2008, 10:01 pm)

The wordpress theme is amazing.
Thanks.
Happy new year, Smashing Magazine ;-)
34.

ShyNloc (December 30th, 2008, 4:45 am)

Wow………cool!
35.

ScooterPed07 (December 30th, 2008, 8:10 am)

Thanks alot! You guys are the coolest. Happy new year!
36.

John Cuervo (December 30th, 2008, 9:46 am)

This was better than most peoples x-mas presents. lol
37.

Agitationist (December 30th, 2008, 12:48 pm)

You folks never fail to come through with the swag!
BTW I’ve linked to you in my “1100 Free WP Themes” post here:
Link [agitationist.com]
Happy New Year!
38.

Rakesh.S (December 30th, 2008, 8:31 pm)

Nice icons, keep posting
39.

Haobam (December 31st, 2008, 12:09 am)

Thats one of the most creative wordpress theme I ever saw. wow
40.

Lutfar Rahman Nirjhar (December 31st, 2008, 12:21 am)

Great Article and Resources. Happy new year!
41.

jhoney (December 31st, 2008, 11:17 am)

WoO Great collection….. i using this web site from one year, but i never get baord from it anymore……..

happy new year to team….and each user of the

smashing magazine
42.

iSoheil (January 4th, 2009, 3:18 am)

OOooOO!! Very cute.
43.

GRL (January 5th, 2009, 9:02 am)

The theme is awesome for photography, but I wish it handled images a bit more elegantly when posting. I find it pretty daunting to make three sizes myself. Also, there doesn’t seem to be support for odd-sized images and portraits without cropping.

Still, thanks for a cool design.
44.

mendou (January 5th, 2009, 10:32 am)

Happy new year!
45.

Alvaris Falcon (January 6th, 2009, 1:08 am)

Wow the social icon is simply incredible, thanks!
46.

Furqan (January 6th, 2009, 1:37 am)

i like the brushes style
47.

Jessie (January 6th, 2009, 5:31 pm)

The brushes are awesome! thx!
48.

clarice (January 7th, 2009, 6:39 am)

o0o0h really suave wordpress concept.
49.

Andy (January 14th, 2009, 3:42 pm)

Great icon pack! I have featured it on my blog…

Link [www.kedoa.com]

Keep up the good work! :)
50.

vio (February 26th, 2009, 2:26 am)

thanx! :)
51.

Timtex37 (March 2nd, 2009, 8:31 am)

Thanks, the nurture icon set is awesome!
52.

jason (March 17th, 2009, 6:10 am)

GAH! i’m making a wordpress theme similar to this… nice to see others out there have similar ideas that i do!
53.

lastkite (March 27th, 2009, 1:26 am)

very good…
54.

Srikanth AD (May 1st, 2009, 1:55 am)

i am going to install the theme right away
thanks Smashing magazine
you guys rock as always
55.

Rockipsiz (June 5th, 2009, 10:57 pm)

Thanks for icons :)