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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: July 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 40 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 what wallpapers have we received for July 2009?

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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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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: June 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 70 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 what wallpapers have we received for June 2009?

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The Ultimate Motion Graphics Tutorials Round-Up

Although static graphics is obviously much easier to scan and therefore can be easily perceived, motion graphics brings dynamics and life into otherwise static content. Animation can help designers to convey a deeper meaning with the use of various video-techniques. It can also provide a better data visualization than the static graphics. How and where you use it in real-life situations is totally up to your talent and your abilities to express yourself.

Motion graphics are not only created using digital techniques; also traditional animation and special effects techniques are used. However, digital techniques help to minimize production costs and achieve nice results with less effort. For example, the Juno opening sequence was a hand-made motion graphics which took painstakingly long time to finish.

A couple of weeks ago we presented Best Tutorials For Cinematic Visual Effects. In this post we present a collection of useful Tutorials for motion graphics – created with the use of digital techniques. These tutorials focus on the designing skills of a motion designer and not on the modeling or the animation. You can use these techniques to create stunning motion graphics or improve upon these ideas and come up with your own creative ideas that will be truly remarkable. Most of the tutorials are from similar sources, because of its quality and usefulness.

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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: May 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 60 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 what wallpapers have we received for May 2009?

Read more...

20 Talented and Impressive Illustrators

A lot of what is seen on TV commercials, catalogues flyers, posters, banners and internet advertisments are made by someone in the world of design or commissioned by someone in the world of art. As time passes, the distinction between artist and designer has been blurred beyond recognition.

Now, in times of instant press and release, inspiration from great artistic measures and processes are the influence and is just as important as functionality. When we see companies like Apple and RIM, we see a collaboration between art and design where the practicality is the designated, artistic measure and process, so what looks good, feels good and works well.

Below is done in the same sight, literally where the eyes are encouraged to explore, stimulating inspiration and aspirational ambition. Below we present 40 talented and impressive illustrators – their work is inspiring, creative, original and beautiful and as such perfect for a lousy saturday evening.

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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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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?

Read more...

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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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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100 (Really) Beautiful iPhone Wallpapers

Few products have generated the kind of hype that the iPhone has. Its beautiful design and large multi-touch screen are irresistible. Although its interface is beautifully designed, some of us want to put a little something extra in it to suit our style, personality and profession and to further beautify this magical masterpiece.

Here, we proudly present the 100 Beautiful iPhone wallpapers, designed by some of the finest and most creative artists around. The wallpapers are 320×480 pixels in resolution and are usable on the iPod Touch as well. In this post we cover typography, nature, retro and vintage, illustrations and artwork, Apple wallpapers, abstract, space. Other topics will be covered in next posts. All of the images are clickable and linked to their source. You can explore further artistic treasures and more wallpapers by using the links.

You might also want to take a look at the following posts:

• (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers
• More (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers
• Selected Wallpapers For Your Desktop
  Covers wallpapers, dev kits, Flickr pools, widescreen and HD monsters and even wallpaper-related social communities and wallpapers for gamers.
• More Creative and Beautiful Wallpapers
  Covers fresh, original and creative wallpapers.
• Selected Wallpapers: For Desktop and Web Design
  Covers Web design-related wallpapers, and has dozens of references for Mac fans.
• 35 Space and Nebula wallpapers

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Stationery Icons, Soccer Icons And Atlantic WordPress Theme

Last year some of our readers complained about the lack of diversity in the sets we have released in 2008. We've heard you, we came up with new ideas and we decided to offer our readers a wide variety of different sets. From now on we are going to release more specific, more practical and (hopefully) more useful icon sets — not just social icons or RSS icons.

We start 2009 with a stationery icon set, a soccer icons set and a fresh Atlantic WordPress theme. Please let us know if we are on the right track.

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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: January 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 40 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 January 2009?

Read more...

Christmas WordPress Theme For Free Download

We may be a little bit late to the Christmas party, but late is usually better than never. In this post we release a very compact, magazine-like theme designed especially for events such as Christmas. We hope that the theme may be useful not only for this Christmas, but can also be used in general, for various purposes. This theme was designed by InstantShift as an exclusive Christmas gift for Smashing Magazine readers.

The theme has a 2-column-based layout and, is based on Christmas and holidays and has some fresh appealing funky icons. The PSD source file of the logo image has also been included with the package. This theme design can be used for any project and will be useful especially for event-related projects.

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Smashing Christmas Icon Sets

In December we asked few designers to come up with some creative, beautiful, memorable yet usable icon sets. Some designers had a tight schedule and couldn't get work done in time, but three designers agreed and delviered their high-quality Christmas icon sets — right in time before the deadline. In this post we are glad to release three beautiful high-quality Christmas icon sets — you can use them for free without any restrictions whatsoever.

You can use all sets 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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Light Blurs Brushes and Decoration Pack For Photoshop

Over the last few weeks, our readers have complained that we have been releasing "way too many freebies". Apparently, we have been posting "too many filler articles" containing freebies that can be found elsewhere on the Web. We would like to make it clear that we do try to release useful things, and we do try to keep the high quality of these freebies and it has never been our intention to fill our publishing schedule with freebie posts.

We are going to continue to release freebies from time to time (though not as often as we have over the last months), and we'll make sure they meet our (and your) standards of high quality. Please let us know your opinion in the comments section below and in the poll below. Thank you.

In this post we release two sets, a Light Blurs Photoshop Brushes, a set of 23 high-quality "light" brushes and Vector Photoshop Brushes Decoration Pack, a set of decoration brushes for Photoshop.

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70 Beautiful Dual-Screen Desktop Wallpapers

Dual displays come in handy when you are working on several projects at the same time. They allow you to separate everything, organize and work efficiently. Dual displays are highly suitable for Web designers, Web developers and graphic designers and they are rapidly gaining on popularity in last years.

We presented hundreds of fullscreen and widescreen wallpapers in our previous selections; however, we did not cover dual screen wallpapers so far. It's time to change that. In this post, we present 70 beautiful dual screen desktop wallpapers, collected from around the Web. Each screenshot is clickable and linked to its source. You can find even more excellent wallpapers at the sources themselves.

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