The most important aspect of designing an individual icon is that it has to be instantly recognizable, you have to know its function, and you need to know exactly what it is.
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Today we are glad to release Quartz Icon Pack, a set with 90 clean, sharp and (hopefully) useful icons for your project. [Links checked February/16/2017]
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Beautiful and free icon sets always come in handy. Used properly and moderately, icons can be helpful to provide users with memorable metaphors and illustrations that would provide a visual support for otherwise unspectacular text blocks.
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A couple of months ago we released the beautiful Flavours Icon set that was designed by Oliver Twardowski, a graphic designer from Bonn, Germany, the set aimed to help designers in their Web and user interface designs, containing 177 icons in a resolution of 48×48 pixels. In this post we release the updated version of the icon set, now with 452 icons, freely available to use in private or commercial projects.
The files are transparent PNGs, and the source file (.psd) is available for download as well (see the links below). As always, the set is completely free and may be used for any private or commercial project without any restrictions whatsoever.
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In this post and in the previous one we release two beautiful professional icon sets that will hopefully meet your expectations and will come in handy in your projects. This icon set was designed by Monica Corduneanu and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
The set contains 17 beautiful icons-illustrations: an envelope, book, home, laidy and the tramp, magnifying glass, mister, mister and misses, newspaper, paperclip, pencil, rain, the French, the gangster, the kids, the reader, twins and, of course, the Smashing addict.
You can find more excellent freebies in our site section Freebies.
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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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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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Why use icons? Design is all about communication: it doesn’t matter how important or exciting the information that you’re sharing is if you fail to hook your visitors. When initially viewing a website, most users will first scan the page for visually interesting content, and only after something grabs their attention will they actually begin reading. Icons are a simple, effective way to draw users into the content of your website.
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When it comes to freebie designs, beautiful icons sets are tops. Designers scour for these free treasures more than anything else. You can use icon sets in Web applications, website designs and on your desktop. If well designed, they make a great impression on others. Beautifully designed icons also prove the quality of a designer’s work, so many designers make theirs freely available online, thus giving their work more exposure.
In the overview below, we present 50 beautifully designed, free and professional high-quality icons for desktop and Web design. All of them can be freely used for private projects, and some are available for commercial use as well. Regardless, always read the licenses – they may change from time to time.
You can also scan through our other icon-related articles:
* 40 Professional Icon Sets for Free Download Download some fresh, professional icon goodies.
* 35 (Really) Incredible Free Icon Sets Spice up your posts with nice illustrations, or enrich your desktop with outstanding dock icons.
* Icons for Your Desktop and Icons for Your Web Designs High-quality free icons that you can use for your desktop and Web designs.
* 20 Free and Fresh Icon Sets Over 20 free beautiful sets and links to other free icon libraries.
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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.
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