We use ad-blockers as well, you know. We gotta keep those servers running though. Did you know that we publish useful books and run friendly conferences — crafted for pros like yourself? E.g. upcoming SmashingConf New York, dedicated to smart front-end techniques and design patterns.
We've featured a lot of different icon sets in the past, but we still haven't had one dedicated to rockets, satellites and solar systems (well, don't forget supernatural aliens as well). There's so much to explore in the world of astronomy, and it's about time we did. Today's icon set was created and designed by the team at Iconshock, and consists of 40 icons in AI, PNG as well as SVG formats. So, dear space troopers out there, what are you waiting for?
Please note that this icon set is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is not cool. Please provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else.
Icon and vector marketplaces like Iconfinder (where I work) are making well-designed vector icons an inexpensive and readily available resource for web and print designers. Thousands of high-quality premium icon sets and hundreds of great free sets are available.
Every icon set submitted to Iconfinder is reviewed and evaluated for potential appeal to our website users and for potential commercial value as premium icons. When reviewing icon sets submitted to the website, we have a responsibility to our designers and to our customers to make sure all premium icons on the website are of the highest possible quality.
Content is the core commodity of the digital economy. It is the gold we fashion into luxury experience, the diamond we encase in loyalty programs and upsells. Yet, as designers, we often plug it in after the fact. We prototype our interaction and visual design to exhaustion, but accept that the “real words” can just be dropped in later. There is a better way.
More and more, the digital goods we create operate within a dynamic system of content, functionality, code and intent. Our products and services drift and spill into partner websites, social media feeds and myriad electronic aggregators, all seeking to shape visitor behavior and understanding. Systems build on systems, and, in short order, we’ve cobbled together a colossus the breadth of which sends minds a-boggling.
Have you ever wondered how elements come together to create successful designs? It’s no accident that compelling design just seems to work. What most of these designs have in common is the use of gestalt grouping principles to organize information that helps us understand the relationships and differences between elements. As designers, we can use these principles to create our own engaging and successful work.
In the first part of this series, we focused on the principles of similarity and proximity to understand how the gestalt principles work in creating relationships between elements. Next, we’ll focus on the principles of closure and figure-ground, which play with positive and negative space to build relationships and create wholes with the sum of their parts. As in the first article, we’ll look at how the principles work and then move on to real-world examples to illustrate them in use.
Embracing fluid typography might be easier than you think. It has wide browser support, is simple to implement and can be achieved without losing control over many important aspects of design.
Unlike responsive typography, which changes only at set breakpoints, fluid typography resizes smoothly to match any device width. It is an intuitive option for a web in which we have a practically infinite number of screen sizes to support. Yet, for some reason, it is still used far less than responsive techniques.
Today we'll be looking at eye candy that will undoubtedly help you start the new week with your creativity freshly nurtured. Grab your cup of coffee or tea, and let these designs shine on you with their smart details, fantastic textures, and well-chosen color palettes.
I’ve sifted through the web to dig up little nuggets of inspiration to indulge in — just for you. This time I’ve collected a potpourri of styles ranging from delicate and subtle to bold and playful. Nothing but design goodness. So please lean back and soak it all in.
The past week showed yet again how fractured opinions in our industry can be and that to some problems there’s definitely more than just one answer, or we still have to figure out what the proper way is in the end. This is why talking about technical problems matters, and this should certainly be done from time to time with your colleagues.
We all know that by sharing and talking to other people, our jobs get more interesting. So, let’s work together more instead of on our own — that would be my advice.
So how do you sell a design system to the client? How do you establish a shared commitment within the company to put a pattern library on the roadmap? As designers and developers, we often know and see the benefits of an overarching system that radiates consistency throughout the different experiences of a company. But sometimes it's seen as a very unpredictable investment, and the value isn't necessarily visible right away.
In his article on Selling Design Systems, Dan Mall suggests to illustrate how fractured an organization is by printing out its different presences online and putting them on a large board as an example of all the wasted money and effort that goes into making sites from scratch, one-by-one, needlessly reinventing the wheel every time.
Music plays an important part in all cultures and comes in many forms. It's a great way to stimulate our thinking and our creativity, and music instruments often even support therapy and healing.
Designed by the team behind IconCrafts, this music instrument icon set is dedicated to all music lovers. It consists of 39 carefully crafted vector icons. All icons are available as 48, 64 and 128px PNG (+ @2x 256px versions + sprites), as well as SVG files. Five different styles are available.
