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Birdies: Cute Free Twitter Icons For Your Blog

In this post we release Birdies: A Free Twitter Icon Set, a set of 12 beautiful and lovely Twitter icons. This set was designed by IconEden and released exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers. All the icons included in the set have clean shapes and neutral colors that can be used for various contexts, from a "Tweet it" button for your blogs to desktop wallpapers.

The set is available in both pixel and EPS vector format so the icons can be rescaled to any size while retaining their original details. As usual, the icons are free for both personal and commercial projects.

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Freebie Release: Quartz Icon Set

Today we are glad to release Quartz Icon Pack, a set with 90 clean, sharp and (hopefully) useful icons for your project. This set was designed by our friend, a Romanian designer Andy Gongea especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The Quartz icon set contains 90 semi-transparent .png-icons in the resolution 64×64px.

The icons can be used without any restrictions for any type of composition – text- or graphic-based. The icons cover a wide range of designs – e-mail icons, software icons, general web application icons and blog icons. The set is free to download and use in any projects.

You may want to take a look at the following related posts:

• Flavour Extended Icon Set
• “Magazeen”: Free Magazine-Look WordPress Theme
• Typography Keyboard Layout

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50 Fresh Useful Icon Sets For Your Next Design

Beautiful and free icon sets always come in handy. Used properly and moderately, icons can be helpful to provide users with memorable metaphors and illustrations that would provide a visual support for otherwise unspectacular text blocks. For instance, in web-applications memorable icons can be very helpful as they can make it easier for users to memorize how to perfom some specific task or where to find some specific functions.

This large collection of recently released icon sets is supposed to help designers improve their designs on their web-sites and in web-applications. All icon sets are free. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the icons — the license can change from time to time. The icons provided below may turn out to be useful and helpful in corporate designs, portfolios, blogs, magazines and in Web-applications. Please feel free to suggest more icon sets in the comments to this post.

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Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts For Your Designs

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.

In this selection we’re glad to present you Chunk, Titilium, Amputa Bangiz, Serif Beta, Quatro, Rough Draft, Comfortaa and a couple of other high-quality free fonts. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts — the license can change from time to time.

• 15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts
• 40 Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design
• You can find over 80 more free fonts in our section Fonts.

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6 Free PSD/(X)HTML-Templates

We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we do our best to make the web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore we ask talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. And when designers agree, truly impressive works see the light of day.

A couple of weeks ago we released DelliStore, a professional CSS/(X)HTML-template with PSD-sources. In the poll and in the comments to this post our readers asked for more (X)HTML/CSS-template, so here are 6 more professional template that you can use without any restriction for your private or commerical projects. The template were designed by Templateworld and released for free especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

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Flavour Extended: The Ultimate Icon Set For Web Designers

A couple of months ago we released the beautiful Flavours Icon set that was designed by Oliver Twardowski, a graphic designer from Bonn, Germany, the set aimed to help designers in their Web and user interface designs, containing 177 icons in a resolution of 48×48 pixels. In this post we release the updated version of the icon set, now with 452 icons, freely available to use in private or commercial projects.

The files are transparent PNGs, and the source file (.psd) is available for download as well (see the links below). As always, the set is completely free and may be used for any private or commercial project without any restrictions whatsoever.

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Fantastic Wallpapers That Will Blow Your Desktop Away

We love desktop wallpapers. And we love beautiful ones most. And although we monthly publish desktop wallpapers of our readers (desktop wallpaper calendar feature), we thought that it would be nice to provide our contributors with some fresh inspiration and our readers with some nice wallpaper update for a lousy Monday.

The wallpapers for this post were selected over a long period of time; they cover mainly nature, abstract and digital art (further collections will be coming if you are interested). We've tried to pick only the most beautiful ones and hopefully you won't be disappointed.

Below we present a showcase of over 50 fantastic wallpapers that will blow your desktop away. Most of them are in HD and will make your desktop look as nifty as it is possible. Because the resolutions are so high, if one doesn't fit your screen, use your favorite image editor to refine its dimensions.

You may also be interested in the following related posts:

• Really Stunning Desktop Wallpapers
• 100 Beautiful iPhone Wallpapers
• 70 Beautiful Dual-Screen Desktop Wallpapers

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Acorn Icon Set For Free Download

In this post and in the previous one we release two beautiful professional icon sets that will hopefully meet your expectations and will come in handy in your projects. This icon set was designed by Monica Corduneanu and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

The set contains 17 beautiful icons-illustrations: an envelope, book, home, laidy and the tramp, magnifying glass, mister, mister and misses, newspaper, paperclip, pencil, rain, the French, the gangster, the kids, the reader, twins and, of course, the Smashing addict.

You can find more excellent freebies in our site section Freebies.

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Project Icon Set For Free Download

Over the last months we've heard numerous complaints about the lack of quality in our freebie releases. We are aware that our readers have high expectations and we try to do our best to meet them in our posts. In this post and in the following one we release two beautiful professional icon sets that will hopefully meet your expectations and will come in handy in your projects.

This icon set, designed by Navdeep Raj and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers, contains 18 beautiful icons related to project management. The set includes the icons address card, bar graph, calendar, clock / time, conference device, contact, documents, draft, mail, marker, milestone, notes, portfolio, project plan / gant chart, search / find, sitemap / flowchart, todo and user / resource.

You can find more excellent freebies in our site section Freebies.

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Friday Freebies: Photoshop Brushes, Vector Graphics, Icons

Over the last months we focused on releases of icons and themes, so we thought that it may be useful to release Photoshop brushes and vector graphics for a change. Hence, in this post we release a set of Photoshop brushes for space effects, a set of brushes to simulate the effect of a painted canvas, a hand-drawn vector illustration set and a Moleskine icon set.

You can use the sets (except the bonus set) for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. You can freely use it for both your private and commercial projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. The set may not be resold, sublicensed, rented, transferred or otherwise made available for use. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word.

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New Smashing Freebies For Designers and Bloggers

As you may or may not know, we love to smash freebies around. Today we are glad to release the Web Developer icons set, designed by Pedja Rusic, a WP Smashing WordPress theme, designed by Greg Johnson and a Cafe icon set, designed by Enk. All icons and the theme are available for free download and can be used without any restrictions whatsoever. Please feel free to suggest ideas for next icon sets or single icons in the comments to this post.

We have noticed Pedja Rusic from Serbia over a year ago, when we presented his icon sets in our free icons round-up. A while ago we contacted him and commissioned the design of icons dedicated to designers and developers. The icons should pay close attention to the smallest details, look original, cool and still remain recognizable.

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Download “Imprezz”, A Free WordPress Theme

In this post we release Imprezz – a simple and beautiful 3-column-theme, a free WordPress theme designed by Gopal Raju from ProductiveDreams for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme can be used in various setting for various purposes - in magazine-blogs, but also in corporate and private blogs.

The theme supports WordPress 2.7.1 and works well with the zdcomments widget (which is used to display the top commenters). The package also include the PSD-source file of the logo.

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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: March 2009

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months.

And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?

This post features 45 free desktop wallpapers, created by designers across the globe. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free.

Please notice:

• all images can be clicked and lead to the preview of the wallpaper;
• you can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

So which wallpapers have we received for March 2009?

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Compositio: Clean, Beautiful and Free WordPress Theme

In comments to our recent freebie releases you asked for a simple, clean and beautiful WordPress-theme; the theme should be easily customize for different purposes and in a variety of settings. We've been listening to you and we heard you: and today we are release (hopefully) exactly what you've been asking for.

In this post we release Compositio – a simple, clean and user-friendly WordPress-theme, created by talented Elena Gafita for Smashing Magazine and its readers. Compositio is a two column theme, made to for those who want to put their content at the front with a unique light blue design. Random square shapes are the defining graphics of this theme. They are used throughout the background, bringing a special rhythm to the theme.

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50 Free High-Quality Icon Sets

When it comes to freebie designs, beautiful icons sets are tops. Designers scour for these free treasures more than anything else. You can use icon sets in Web applications, website designs and on your desktop. If well designed, they make a great impression on others. Beautifully designed icons also prove the quality of a designer's work, so many designers make theirs freely available online, thus giving their work more exposure.

In the overview below, we present 50 beautifully designed, free and professional high-quality icons for desktop and Web design. All of them can be freely used for private projects, and some are available for commercial use as well. Regardless, always read the licenses -- they may change from time to time.

You can also scan through our other icon-related articles:

• 40 Professional Icon Sets for Free Download
  Download some fresh, professional icon goodies.
• 35 (Really) Incredible Free Icon Sets
  Spice up your posts with nice illustrations, or enrich your desktop with outstanding dock icons.
• Icons for Your Desktop and Icons for Your Web Designs
  High-quality free icons that you can use for your desktop and Web designs.
• 20 Free and Fresh Icon Sets
  Over 20 free beautiful sets and links to other free icon libraries.

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Smashing Retro Icon Set

Over the last few months, we have extensively covered the influence of retro and vintage style on modern Web design. We have looked at recent vintage Web designs, showcased posters and typography and presented vintage tutorials. In fact, we are confident that vintage is still in, and that many designers are experimenting with this style to achieve unusual, creative and (hopefully) effective results.

So today, we are pleased to release the Smashing Retro Icon Set, a set of 10 beautiful, high-quality "vintage" icons, created by the talented Russian design agency SoftFacade especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The set contains 10 original icons: search, sign-up, calendar, news, RSS, comments, email, ads, home and address.

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100 Beautiful Free Textures

Use of texture in Web design is extremely common. Part of the reason textures are so useful to designers is the relative ease of the integrating one into a design if a high-quality textured image already exists, not to mention the endless possibilities. Fortunately, plenty of photographers and designers are willing to share their work with the rest of us so that we can use them in a number of different ways.

In this post, we'll look at 100 different textures in a wide variety of different categories. Of course, each image is linked to the source where it can be downloaded. As with any type of freebie, be sure to read the terms and conditions or stipulations by the owner before using it in your work.

For more on textures see:

• Textures in Modern Web Design
• Textures and Patterns Design Showcase
• Smashing Texture Contest

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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: February 2009

The wallpapers calendar series will not be discontinued. Next month is the last month in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. In February, you'll have one last chance to showcase your work by designing a desktop wallpaper calendar for Smashing Magazine. But don't worry, we have a number of new contests coming up, so it will be worth staying in touch!

Wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use one wallpaper for a long time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration from it. That’s why we decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers to cover 12 months. And to make them a little more distinctive than the usual fare, we decided to embed calendars for each month. If you need to look up a date, isn’t it better to show off nice wallpaper with a nice calendar, instead of launching your default time application?

This post features 70 (!) free desktop wallpapers for February 2009, created by designers across the globe. Every wallpaper can be downloaded for free and comes in two versions: one with a calendar and one without.

Please note:

• All images are linked to a preview of the wallpaper.
• You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to feature on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

This month, we've been literally smashed by the explosion of your desktop wallpaper calendars. So look out, February 2009, we're coming!

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Friday Freebies: Flavours Icon Set And Cute Tweeters Icon Set

We continue to deliver fresh high-quality freebies to our readers and we continue to pursue the diversity of subjects that we are going to cover on Smashing Magazine. From the beginning of the year each icon set is supposed to be dedicated to some specific theme or topic that may turn out to be useful for your next project. Today we are releasing 2 free high-quality icon sets.

Oliver Twardowski, a graphic designer from Bonn, Germany, has put a lot of time and efforts to release a handy icon set especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. His set, aimed to help designers in their web designs and user interface designs, contains 177 icons in the resolution 48×48px. The files are available for free download as .png and .psd-sources, so you can modify the files as you wish.

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The Ultimate Collection Of Free Vector Packs

Designers love freebies that make life easier and help them create higher-quality work. Free vectors are useful, free vector packs even more so. Fortunately, there are plenty of talented graphic designers who are willing to give away their work (or samples of it) to benefit the rest of us. In this post, we feature 60 of the best and most useful free vector packs.

Many of the vectors featured here would be useful for particular styles of design and specific types of websites. Take a few moments to browse through them, and you may find something that's perfect for a current or upcoming project. Before you use any of the freebies, be sure to check the license designated by the creator to stay within the stated guidelines.

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