The most inspirational things are often right in front of us. It might be the typography on a book cover, the colors of your favorite music album, the opening titles in that movie you saw yesterday. To celebrate all those little moments of inspiration, we have compiled some resources for you which honor the beauty of graphic design and the ideas behind it. Perfect to squeeze into a short coffee break. Enjoy!
We learned not to judge a book by its cover, but, honestly, there is nothing quite like browsing through a bookstore, soaking up covers, their colors, their typefaces, their layouts, every little detail. The variety is endless, and sometimes you’re lucky and find a little piece of art shining through the sheer mass.
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Inspiration lies everywhere: in a conversation, a walk through a foreign city, or, in other people’s works. To fuel your ideas, we celebrate the beginning of each month with what we found to be the best source for daily inspiration: desktop wallpapers that are a bit more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for almost eight years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.
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Free icons are a great way to spice up your work with small effort. While some of them are plain useful, others give a project a fun twist.
The following collection of free icon sets offers both — payment provider icons just like summer goodness to help you over a rainy day. All icons can be downloaded and used for free.
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Photoshop is still a favorite among a lot of web designers, and the right tools make it even more powerful as it already is. To help you boost productivity, save time, and, obviously, nerves, we have picked some valuable Photoshop resources, plugins, and scripts for you.
Some of them will speed up routine tasks so you can concentrate more on your actual work, others build a bridge between Photoshop and code so your design mockups can benefit from the best of both worlds. Unless otherwise noted, the resources are free to use.
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When it comes to web projects, real estate and home appliances go well together, so today we’re happy to release a lovely free icon set with 72 related icons. The set includes icons in 4 sizes and in 8 formats: AI, CSH, EPS, SVG, PDF, PNG, Sketch and Webfont. The icon set is free to use in personal and commercial projects. Designed by Funline Icons.
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In this tutorial, I will teach you how to work digitally on an image you draw by hand. You will learn two completely different ways to approach the image: through the Live Trace Tool and the Pen Tool. Two ways, two results. Learn how to take the best from both.
Along the way, I will give you some Photoshop tips, too. The first thing you’ll need to know is how to manage your drawing in Photoshop and which are the best ways to prepare it for Illustrator. If you are not comfortable drawing in Photoshop, don’t worry! You can download my drawing in high-resolution, skip the Photoshop step and go straight to step 2 to begin with Illustrator.
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Since seven years, we welcome the new month with a collection of unique desktop wallpapers. And it’s not any different this time around. Created by designers and artists from across the globe, they are just waiting to give your desktop a makeover and provide you with some fresh inspiration.
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The new year is an occasion to start things fresh, to rethink current practices and habits. So why not start small? Clean up your desktop and give it an inspiring new background. We might have something for you: desktop wallpapers created by artists and designers from across the globe as a part of our monthly desktop wallpapers challenge.
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It’s Christmas time, and we’re happy to release a brand-new freebie today, just for you! A set of 110 Christmas icons and illustrations that you can you use for sending your Christmas greetings and for any commercial projects.
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Since seven years, our monthly desktop wallpapers post is a Smashing favorite that wouldn’t be possible without the tireless efforts of designers and artists from across the globe. Each month, we challenge you, the design community, to get your creative juices flowing and produce some interesting and inspiring desktop wallpapers. And well, we are very thankful to everyone who tickles their creativity and contributes to this challenge every month.
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