Today we are glad to release iCandies Icon Set, a set with 60 high quality icons in 64×64px, 48×48px and 32×32px, available in .EPS, .AI and .PNG. The set is designed by the talented folks from IconEden on a sole purpose of giving your projects a sleek and geeky style or provide crisp, attractive icons for your modern and fashionable-looking interfaces. All the icons in this pack — 60 icons in total — are designed in Round Rectangle shape.

Download the icon set for free!

You can use the 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 or rented. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word.

large previewdownload the set (.zip, 5.1 Mb)A word from the designers

As always, here are some words from the designers of the set:

Dear Smashing Magazine readers, 

IconEden’s 2nd birthday is coming! And we’re as excited about it as you’re. To celebrate our two years of rocking the icon design world, IconEden collaborated with Smashing Magazine to craft a small set of 60 wonderful icons called “iCandies”! And it’s all yours. 

Similar to previous collections, iCandies comes in vector and pixel formats and can be immediately be built into your projects at no cost. You can use the icons for any commercial and personal projects.


Thank you very much, guys! We appreciate your efforts.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]Related Posts

You may be interested in the following related releases:The Ultimate Free Web Designer’s Icon Set (750 icons, incl. PSD sources)Free Medical Icons Set (60 Icons)Yummy! Free Food and Cakes Icon Set (20 Icons)Quartz Icon Set (90 clean sharp icons)gCons: Free...

Read more: iCandies Icon Set: 60 Free Icons For Your User Interfaces and Apps

  

In celebrating the merits of free software and the excitement over this radical networked production method, an important truth is left unspoken. Networked collaboration shines in the low levels of network protocols, server software and memory allocation, but user interface has consistently been a point of failure. How come the networked collaboration that transformed code production and encyclopedia-writing fails to translate to graphic and interface design?

The following is an investigation into the difficulties of extending the open-source collaboration model from coding to its next logical step: interface design. While we’ll dive deep into the practical difference between these two professional fields, the article might also serve as a note of caution to think before rushing to declare the rise of “open-source architecture,” “open-source university,” “open-source democracy” and so on.



[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #2 is Successful Freelancing for Web Designers, 260 pages for just $9,90.]The ChallengesScratching an Itch

By going open-source, coders are fulfilling a need to change software, to make it their own. They might have different motivations, but if you’re already modifying something for yourself, answering the “Why share?” question is really easy with “Why not?” By the time the code executes correctly, the immediate users of the software—that is, the coders themselves—are already familiar with the software and can operate it even without a delicately crafted user interface.

Therefore, the motivation to take an extra step and invest in a usable interface that would extend the user base beyond the original geek-pool is not obvious. The interface already works for me, so what itch am I scratching by working hard to make it usable for others who can’t help me code it?

For the designers themselves, what is their incentive to...

Read more: The Case For Open-Source Design: Can Design By Committee Work?

  

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?

This post features 75 free desktop wallpapers, created by designers across the globe. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free.

Please notice:all images can be clicked and lead to the preview of the wallpaper;you can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?You may be interested in the Windows 7 Theme: Desktop Wallpapers September 2010, too.

So what wallpapers have we received for September 2010?

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]Tension9

"I made a 9 on the fence with nails and woolen to express the tension. It has come to the ninth month of 2010. Still working hardly and stressfully? Take it easy!" Designed by Ssu-Hua Chen from Australia.

previewwith calendar: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200Autumn Skyview

"Laying on field watching the sky above, leaves are falling, autumn is coming." Designed by Jaro Mlkvy from Slovakia.

previewwith calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200without calendar...

Read more: Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: September 2010

  

A few years ago, you might not have pointed out during a meeting with a potential client that you maintained a blog. Over time, though, blogs have evolved from the being a personal hobby to a serious work tool. In fact, today, web designers are supposed to know much more than just how to design and build websites. Customer’s expectations have increased, and unless you are in position to choose your favourite clients, meeting these expectations requires hard work.

Hence, it’s important to keep learning about the variety of design-related fields every single day — be it marketing, psychology, business, copywriting, publishing or blogging. This article doesn’t cover “traditional” web design discipline as we know it, but goes a bit beyond it, exploring various writing, blogging and online publishing strategies. Apart from that, we present some useful writing style guides that may help you educate your clients on their copy for their upcoming project.


Image credit

Good news: you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you are about to start and run a blog. Many bloggers have already shared their best tips on how to run a blog efficiently. One of those tips is to set up an editorial agenda. Blogging may sound like a spontaneous activity, but it can also be planned. While this might sound obvious to professional bloggers, applying the idea to less regular posting schedules is not a bad idea. Some will benefit greatly from looking ahead. Writing and posting according to your inspiration is great creatively, but it doesn’t exactly make for consistent work. While planning can have its drawbacks, it does come with many positive effects.

Compiling a list of brilliant posts waiting to be published is not enough, though. Polishing the quality of the posts is important, too. Unfortunately, spelling is not the only thing to check. Style guides are useful to many people other than those who run newspapers and...

Read more: Blogging For Web Designers: Editorial Calendars and Style Guides

  

In this post we release a yet another freebie: Academica WordPress Theme, a free WordPress theme designed specifically for educational websites such as universities, schools etc. It’s a flexible and versatile free theme that can be easily customized and branded for any university, academy or non-profit organization. The theme is designed by ProudThemes and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. As usual, the theme is free to use in private and commerical projects.

Download the theme for free!

The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.

live demolarge preview (.jpg, 0.6 Mb)download the theme (.zip, 0.12 Mb)download the .PSD Logo (.zip, 42Kb)release on the developer’s site

If you want to be informed when an update to Academica theme will be released, consider signing up with ProudThemes (free).FeaturesThe theme was developed for WordPress 3.0 (compatible with 3.0.1)Modern, three-column clean designSetting up Academica Theme is easy and takes just a few seconds. The theme can be uploaded directly from the Dashboard > Appearance > Themes page. No need to edit any files — everything can be done from the Theme Options page.5 built-in icons to share and link to your profiles on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and YoutubeThe theme allows enabling/disabling of a jQuery-based content slider on the homepage for showing your photosAcademica Theme uses a jQuery-based drop-down menu with a fade-in effect9 sidebars (widget areas) and 3 custom widgets developed for this theme3 custom page templates and 2 custom post templatesDynamic image resizing (TimThumb script)Support for Custom Menus (WordPress 3.0+).Screenshots


Drop-down navigation menu. See live demo.


Content blocks in the sidebar, defined with a custom widget. See live demo.


News archive page. See live...

Read more: Academica: Free WordPress 3.0+ Theme For Educational Websites