April 1, 2014 — This freebie contains 60 icons that have been designed in both round and flat styles, and can be used for free without any restrictions and serve various design purposes. Crafted with great attention to detail, today’s icon set is extremely easy to use and will most probably be the next ultimate resource for any of your design projects. Feel free to modify the size, color or shape of the icons, and use the icons in your commercial as well as your personal projects. Read more…

March 31, 2014 — We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for April 2014. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper! This creativity mission has been going on for six years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month. Read more…

March 31, 2014 — At SmashingMag, we cherish the idea of lasting traditions—be it monthly desktop wallpapers, editorial newsletters or those weird mystery riddles. So in the spirit of tradition, the riddle had to be based on animated GIFs. During an intensive, unscheduled, battery-recharge brainstorming session, we came up with a number of interesting ideas, all thoroughly written down, tagged and ready for use. Read more…

March 29, 2014 — Gestalt principles are important to understand. They sit at the foundation of everything we do visually as designers. They describe how everyone visually perceives objects. This article is part of a new series about design principles that can serve both as a refresher for seasoned designers and reference for newcomers to the industry. Hopefully, the content covered here isn’t too obvious and self-explanatory, but it’s always great to have a nice quick refresher every now and again, isn’t it? Read more…

March 27, 2014 — The Mystery continues! To celebrate the launch of Paul Boag’s Digital Adaptation book, we’ve prepared a new riddle, and this time it’s a bit different and a bit easier. Below you’ll find three animated GIFs that contain a hidden message. Once you’ve resolved the mystery, please tweet the full sentence @smashingmag using the hashtag #smashing. Read more…

March 27, 2014 — Below you’ll find three animated GIFs that contain a hidden message. Each GIF contains a few scattered letters (all uppercase) that you can use to build words. Read more…

March 25, 2014 — Being a good designer or developer is about so much more than knowing how to use tools. It’s also about the way you approach what you do and your attitude towards it. In this article, Andrew Clarke is going to talk about four lessons that can help you do what you do better. These have been important to him. They’re lessons that he learned a long time ago, at art school. Read more…

March 24, 2014 — In this article, Olawale Oladunni will share how he used Adobe Fireworks in his iterative visual design process, along with other useful tips. As he explored all of the alternative ways to make one’s workflow efficient, he realized that Fireworks is still powerful and will continue to be the best option until Adobe unveils its replacement or until another competitor supports all of its features, including integration with other Adobe products, as Fireworks currently provides. Read more…

March 21, 2014 — People recommend various tips on optimizing WordPress’ performance. All of them are effective ways, however, be careful when implementing any of these techniques. In this article, Hristo Pandjarov will cover some of the most common issues with various speed boosters that he has encountered and share solutions to help you fix those problems or find ways around them. Read more…

March 20, 2014 — With time, Arabic calligraphy began to be used in architecture, decoration and coin design, and it continues to develop both in traditional methods as well as in digital and computer-generated arts. Arabic calligraphers from around the world continue to develop their own styles and artwork based on existing scripts and their own letters and scripts. Free modern scripts contribute to the art just as much as traditional scripts have done. Read more…