The world of WordPress themes is monstrous, if you allow me to stay close to the animal wording the name of this new theme club suggests. Not only the sheer amount of free themes doesn’t allow anybody to stay atop of the development. Also the Premium offers have grown to an extent noone can by any means oversee. There’s quite some discussion going on, whether this oversupply of themes might be able to break WordPress and what to do against it. Crocoblock might be part of the solution. That’s worth a closer look, isn’t it? Oh, and you can win something. So read on…
Summer is approaching fast. I remember Winter still. Time is a fast-paced business. The good thing about it, the next part of any of our series is always near. As a frequent reader you know that, dedicated to the needs of any designer and developer out there, we here at Noupe maintain a handful of monthly series, bringing you the best and freshest resources available in a few comprehensible posts. Today we continue with our very popular series on design resources. Our favorite this month is Stack, a PSD Mac OS X Yosemite UI. As always, there should be something for everybody. If you’re a first-time visitor to this series, scroll down to the bottom of the post where we have neatly listed all the already published parts of our monthly collection.
If you professionally use Photoshop as your favorite image editor, chances are, you’ve heard of Filter Forge more than once during the last few years. Filter Forge is a software and a plugin for Adobe Photoshop and other image editors with the same plugin technology. With Filter Forge you are able to create your own filters visually. This is great, of course, but even greater is the growing collection of community-made filters, ready for you to use. More than 10,000 are available at the time of this writing, with more being added daily. Filter Forge is not a free software, though. Today we teamed up with the great folks behind this equally great piece of software, to give three of our readers the chance to win them a license of Filter Forge 4 Standard, worth 249 USD. Come in and find out…
The good news about the Internet is that it’s a rich and powerful source of help, information and expertise. The bad news is that it provides an almost limitless amount of information and an ever-increasing supply of experts on just about every subject. So if you are searching for some web resources for your next project, how do you know they are reliable, licensed to use and of high quality? Well, we have a great solution for you. The following collection of freebies grants you reliability, no hassle use licenses and high quality all in one fell swoop. Did we mention, that all of the resources are free? No? They are all free…
It doesn’t often enter into our thought process, but every purchase we make is affected by an agent of influence. We’re constantly persuaded, motivated, and moved by media. Our daily choices, preferences, and leanings are all subtly pushed one way or the other, by the random bits of media we digest on the regular. It’s akin to mass hypnosis really.
So who’s the man holding the watch?
The value of icons lies in their ability to support content in web design and communicate with users in more intuitive and effective ways. Most users are known to first scan a page for visually interesting content, and only after something grabs their attention will they actually begin reading. In short, icons are a simple, effective way to draw users into the content of your website.
Today’s icon set consists of a passionate set of icons in two styles (flat and light gradient). The icons have been carefully designed by PixelBuddha1 and released exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
This icon set is completely free to use for commercial or personal applications without any restrictions. Please always provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word. Thanks!
An airplane icon in both flat and light gradient versions included within the set.2A preview of the “flat” version of the Ballicons 2 icon set. (Large preview3)4A preview of the “light gradient” version of the Ballicons 2 icon set. (Large preview5)
Download The Icon Set For Free!
This icon set is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported6. You can use the icons in your commercial as well as your personal projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is prohibited.
“We usually work on each icon until every member of our team loves it, and don’t think twice before throwing out assets that make us feel unsure about them. We believe, that when we’re talking about big-sized icons, it is more important to focus on their quality, not amount. Our experience shows, that a small set of widely applicable metaphors is enough to satisfy the needs of designers and developers. That’s why we do our best in creating small icon sets, but making them as sharp and beautiful as we are able to. Ballicons 2 is a brighter and higher quality iteration of our original icon set. We hope you’ll like them! Enjoy!”
Thank you to the creative minds behind Pixel Buddha — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts! Keep up the brilliant work!
Trends in web as well as in mobile design tend to come and go like fashion. Truly devoted UI designers only catch on those that are worth it. Nowadays flat style runs the show. Microsoft’s Metro UI started the trend, while Apple’s iOS7 gave it the real boost. Designers all over the world give preference to plain shapes, simple graphics, minimal coloring, bold typography and the absence of various lavish effects when it comes to prototyping website and mobile app interface designs. Flat style involves the use of various elements starting at icons with long shadows and not ending up at line-style graphics.
