1stwebdesigner - Graphic and Web Design Blog » Freebies

Premium Like But Free Exclusive Wordpress Theme: SketchPad

ThemeSheep — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:00:02 +0000

SketchPad is a free WordPress 3.0 ready theme that’s ready to fuel your magazine or social blog style website. With 10 vivid colors options, you’re sure to suit the style of your blog. 100% Valid XHTML and CODE ensure that you’re website will be cross browser compatible and up to standards. Thumbnails are easily applied using the standard WordPress “Post Thumbnail” or “Featured Image” built in functionality. Turn your blog into an attractive, easy to use, and functional website with SketchPad from ThemeSheep.

SketchPad is released under the GPL V2 license specifically for 1stwebdesigner, so you’re free from restrictions on how you use it! Feel free to use it for any personal or commercial websites. Just remember to share, tweet, link, and comment on this article to help support this free WordPress theme!

Features of SketchPad

10 Awesome Color Schemes
WordPress 3.0 Custom Menu Implementation
4 Widgetized Footer Areas
Custom Ad Management Widget
ThemeSheep Admin Options
Custom Home Page Post Layout Options
“Latest Tweet” Header Option (can disable from admin options)
Integrated Page Navigation
Automatic Thumbnail Integration, set it and forget it!
Set your own custom logo easily
Input your Analytics or other tracking code through admin options
Bread crumb navigation
“Related Posts” custom feature

DEMO

DOWNLOAD

DETAILS PAGE

10 Awesome Color Schemes to Choose From

Easily change the look of your website through the ThemeSheep admin options page. Just select the color that you like, hit “save options” and you’re blog is instantly changed to the color of your choice.

Custom Post Layout Options

Through our admin options, you can easily select whether to display all large full width posts (as you see in the demo) or small half page width posts. You can even mix these layouts up and do “X” amount of large, and “X” amount of small posts! You’re in control of how your posts are displayed to your readers.

Custom Author Box and Post Excerpt Captions

Out of the box, SketchPad will create an “Author Box” in every one of your blog posts. This author box will use the authors email Gravatar as the image, use the author’s name as a link to their posts, and use the “BIO” information that an author can fill out in their WordPress profile page. Another neat feature is the custom excerpt caption. This area is directly beside the main posts thumbnail and will first display the “excerpt” field ( you have to fill the excerpt field out whilst creating a new post ), if no excerpt variable exists, it takes the first 150 characters from your content to display. This is a great way to give visitors a quick summary on the article and the author, capturing their interest and increasing reader loyalty.

Details Page

SketchPad is available for free download, or if you’d like to work from the PSD’s, the developer package is available for $22 USD. Both are available on our details page

Demo Page

A full featured demo is up for your viewing pleasure. You can preview every color options as well as check out all the features of the theme on the demo page

Download SketchPad

SketchPad.zip (ZIP file 245kb)

Free WordPress Theme : A Simple Magazine

DynamicWP — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:00:04 +0000

A Simple Magazine, is a free WordPress theme with magazine style. The theme packed with 5 color schemes, 2 unique page layout, 2 custom widget, and more customization option in theme option page, make your website more unique.

A Simple Magazine is provided to user under the open source GPL License, you can use it for all your project or at least use it as a foundation for your next projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the world.

A Simple Magazine is released especially for 1stwebdesigner readers.

Features

5 in 1 color schemes,
Widget ready (footer and sidebar),
Package with twitter widget and flickr widget,
Easy to setup with theme options page,
AJAX-based contact form,
Social media on sidebar,
Social share button,
Integrated plugin wp-page navi,
Automatic Image thumbnail-No custom field.

Theme Previews

Frontpage

Archive page

Contact page

Share button

Flickr and Twitter Widget

Demo

You can see the functional live demo of A Simple Magazine.

Documentation

Read the documentation page of AsimpleMagazine, to learn how to use this theme.

Download

ASimpleMagazine (ZIP, 184.2 kb)

DepositPhotos Giveaway: 3 People To Win Accounts

Dainis Graveris — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:00:25 +0000

DepositPhotos.com is a great resource for buying and selling Royalty-free photographs and vector illustrations. They slogan is – “Buy It Easy! Sell It Easy” describing how easy it is to do both tasks so you are in the right place if you are searching for premium photographs or trying to sell your work and earn some extra money!

Why am I writing this? Because today we have a giveaway to launch with you and we are giving away:3 accounts in Depositphotos each worth 50$!

Before we give away details about contest, we will introduce you a little bit more with DepositPhotos website and highlight special issues which make this site to stand out:

Stock Photos from $0,1

Yes, if you don’t need high quality images, but just small eye-candy shots or illustrations to explain your text, product, thought visually – you will be highly pleasant with such option.

Special offer now – 2 images for the price of one!

Now Depositphotos also have interesting special offer allowing to buy images even cheaper – handy if you need original images regularly, but you don’t want to spend so much money-getting them.

Over 1,500,000 images in database

I was surprised there are so many images available, after giving a little search in topic I was interested in I got several pages of specific images, even more than I’ll ever need. Maybe in very specific topics such results would differentiate, but I am definitely pleasant with results and I am sure you will be too.

Subscriptions from $19

There are at least 4 ways for you to purchase images from DepositPhotos .com; you can even mix and match them in a single order if you’d like. Whether you’re buying one image at a time or 40 images a day, our low prices and quality service cannot be beat!

And one of the options is subscription as well offering different plans you can choose from:

As you can see, you have many options to choose from and if you are in need of premium images and vectors, DepositPhotos is definitely one of the best options to consider.

Contest Giveaway Details

This day we will make it simple – just leave a comment under the article and we will use random number generator to choose winner! Starting from this time – contest will go one week – be sure you come back here after that to know happy winners!

If you want to leave thoughtful response however – leave your thoughts in which case you would spend money for premium image, what kind of experiences you have?!

Ahh…and we have our winners!:

Decoene
Anastasia
pradeep

Congratulations, Depositphotos will contact with you really soon!

40 Handy Photoshop Custom Shape Sets: Save Time

Daniels Mekšs — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:00:22 +0000

Photoshop custom shapes are useful, if you can’t create the shape yourself, don’t have the right brush or just need that element in high resolution and really sharp. Custom shapes are easy to use and edit. If you’re familiar with pen tool, you can easily create your own shapes. Shapes differentiate from brushes because they are actually created from vectors which will let you get them in really high quality and clean in all cases!

Browse trough these 40 sets (over 400 unique shapes) to find something useful for you to use in your next web or graphic design project! Feel free to experiment!

1. Flower Shapes by ms-an9el

2. 24 Custom Photoshop Shapes by danijeL-one

3. Clover Custom Shape by Adan Alvarado

4. Photoshop Shapes – Hot babes by mutato-nomine

5. Business People by All Silhouettes

6. Vector Skeletons Clipart by Gloomus

7. Free Vector Skulls by Gloomus

8. Vector Grunge Splashes by Gloomus

9. Sexy Fashion Models by VectorLady

10. Natural Like Leaves & Bushes by VectorLady

11. Vector Eagles Clipart by All Silhouettes

12. Vector Racing Flags by All Silhouettes

13. Speech Balloon Shapes by Sue Chastain

14. Animals by H-Vision

15. World Map by lukeroberts

16. CD DVD Logos by Rich Denton

17. Car Logos by See-Create

18. Silhouettes of people by All Silhouettes

19. Vector Dogs Silhouettes by All Silhouettes

20. Extreme Sport by All Silhouettes

21. Nate’s Shapes by Nathan Blenke

22. Assorted Logos by Richard Perkins

23. Lavas Custom Shapes Set by lavakillu

24. Live Trees by Marshall Watson

25. Circles by Smolord

26. Custom Shapes Pack v. 1.1 by glassbitch

27. Web Icons Shapes by Witold Eysymontt

28. Light Rays by funkyfreshfab

29. Lion King Shapes by Lucifer017

30. Wavy Lines by Keven Kaan Bayrak

31. It’s a Social Web by Juliet van Ree

32. Summer Photoshop Shapes Vol.1 by Emma Alvarez

33. Photoshop Filmstrip Shapes by olliesan

34. Arrow Symbols Icons by Design Work Plan

35. Snowflake Shapes by Dezignus

36. Signs of the Zodiac by All Silhouettes

37. Petit Simple Circle Shape by Petit Brain

38. Common People for Architecture by All Silhouettes

39. Grunge Shapes by ENAM-STOCKS

40. Transportation Doodle Shapes by debh945

50 Hand Picked Fancy and Decorative Fonts

Taimur Asghar — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:00:25 +0000

Today we have collected 50 Fancy and Decorative Fonts, these fonts can get pretty extravagant but they are ideal for fancy designs including some creative web development or making sign boards for a company or a restaurant. I agree some of them are difficult to understand but it can be used as a “strategy to attract the visitors or customers, they will take more interest in understanding these fonts. We hope that these fonts would help you in your next design project!

1. 101! Cacti

2. Alchemist

3. Box Font

4. Bunker

5. Candy Cane

6. Fish in the bathroom

7. Holy Smokes

8. Horny Devils

9. Hypmotizin

10. In my closet

11. Loopy BRK

12. Maruto Skiing

13. Ridicule

14. Sundays are Boring

15. Swirled

16. Tom

17. Vtks Black

18. Dutch & Harley

19. VTKS Deja Vu

20. Moon Star

21. Floral Dawn

22. Sabrina

23. Kingthings Willow

24. Floralies

25. Kingthings Pique’n'meex

26. Blossom

27. Kingthings Annex

28. Alien Crop Circles

29. Bend It

30. Boneca de Pano

31. FK Chain

32. Tarantella

33. Blomster

34. Amerika

35. Leafy glade

36. Rothenburg

37. Ogrejuice

38. Arruba

39. Flower

40. Beauregard

41. VTKS Dear Love

42. Flores

43. Gscript

44. Hybrid Hibiscus

45. Dearest Dorothy

46. Nemo

47. Vtks Caps Loco

48. Santas Big Secret

49. Gypsy Rose

50. Hannah

Know some more grea fancy fonts? Let us know and what’s your favorite pick from this collection? Huh?

50 High Quality Funky and Groovy Fonts for Your Designs

Taimur Asghar — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:00:15 +0000

Today we have collected 50 High Quality Funky and Groovy fonts which can be used to make some funny design and on the other hand they can be used in web-designing also! These fonts are very handy when it comes to designing kids websites. We are sure that they will help you in your designs.:)

1. Alfabetix

2. Crown Doodle

This font looks creepy and funky at the same time!

3. Arbuckle

4. Cocktail

5. Cream and sugar

6. Funk

On one side this font depicts the Gothic characteristic and on the other hand it provides excellent funky look!

7. Die Nasty

8. Ecliptic

9. Electro insanity

10. Icklips

Ideal funky font for those who like slim writing and typography!

11. Incarnation

12. LateNite

13. McBoing Boing

14. Mullet

15. Tabun

Very impressive and cute font style. 1 of my favorites.

16. Untitled 2

17. Earth People

18. Fixd Station

19. Jigga jigga

Don’t know what jigga jigga means but it surly is a fantastic font which can be used in professional manner also!

20. Intaglios

21. Spanky

22. InkyBear

23. Rokford

A combination of simplicity and funkiness.

24. I suck at golf

25. Telopone

26. Anger

27. Amputa Bangiz Standard TTF

Excellent font from deviantart. Difficult to understand but it provides a very unique and attractive look to your design !

28. ABC II

29. MDRS-FD01

30. Font bola

31. Betlog Square Standard TTF

32. Epistolar font

Author’s comments:
“When I was a little kid, I used to watch some christian scrolls my grandmothers had in their respective homes. I loved the typography they used to make them. Many years later, i searched up and down for that font, but couldn’t find it. So I went to Librería Parroquial (a christian bookstore) and searched for some of those scrolls. In close examination, I realized they didn’t use a ready made font, but instead wrote them by hand. So, I copied the glyphs and made the font out of them.”

33. WeWant – Spike Font

34. Dreamforge Classic

If you want to know how creative people are in this world then see this font! Incredibly amazing.
P.S: THIS VERSION IS ONLY WRITABLE WITH CAPS-LOCK.

35. Homeboots

36. Circled

37. LeinBold

38. The Elements

39. Akareb

40. Legend

As the name tells you, and in my opinion also, this font is legend.

41. Accessories

42. Solange

This font can be used to design header of some design related website as it provide a very intriractive look and its creativity will attract the visitors .

43. Maropawi Club

44. Psychotic Elephant

45. Monkey Love

46. Subelair

47. Jackson

48. VAL

I have used this font in heck on different ways and designs and this is 1 of my favorite as i love balloon fonts.

49. Sniglet

50. Anabolic Spheroid

In the end i request to leave your feedback because it will help us to improve the quality of article. You can also tell me on which category i should write in my next article :)

Ultimate Roundup With Thousands Of Cool Photoshop Brushes

Daniels Mekšs — Sun, 23 May 2010 11:00:40 +0000

Brush Tool is probably one of the most used tools in Photoshop. There are some default brushes coming along with Photoshop, but usually you are looking for something more. Custom brushes can make your projects much easier and the effect is usually better too.

But don’t make the common beginner mistake – learn how to use Photoshop first, learn how to create the effect you want to achieve with brush and only then download all the brushes you need. A good designer does not really need a lot of brushes, he needs a few, but good ones. I think you will be able to find the good ones for you in this massive, over 400 set, collection of Photoshop brushes.

1. 50+ Amazing Free Abstract Photoshop Brushes

In this article you’ll find a list of high quality and professional abstract brushes that;are found very useful either in web, wallpaper or even print design. The brushes are mainly for Photoshop but some of the brush creators have provided other formats of the brushes in PNG or for Gimp. The brushes licenses range from free for personal use only to free for both personal and commercial use as well

2. 24 New Photoshop Brushes: Best of April 2010

24 best Photoshop brushes for April 2010 listed in no particular order. All of these brushes are free to download and use for personal purposes, provided that you conform with the terms set by the authors.

3.; Free For All: 2010 Photoshop Brushes

Set of 2010 Photoshop brushes in nine categories.

4. 250 Hi Res Splatter, Spray, & Watercolor Photoshop Brushes

Don’t have the time to buy the right materials and create your own traditional-style-painting Photoshop Brushes? Maybe you just don’t know where to start? No worries –;this article contain nearly 250 of the best Splatter, Paint, Spray, and Watercolor brushes that we think you’ll love!

5. 500+ Space Brushes for Photoshop

Want to create a space scene and don’t know how to start? Maybe some of these brushes could help you.

6. Oriental Photoshop Brushes And Vector Images For Mysterious Designs

The collection includes Chinese dragons, Japanese, Chinese & Arabic texts, People, Houses, Mosques;and various figures.

7. 500+ Photoshop Textures Brushes

Textured graphics are obviously very popular right now, and fortunately there are tons of free Photoshop brushes that will help you to quickly and easily get the textured look you want. This post is a showcase of some of the best sets of brushes available anywhere for creating textures.

8. 400+ Floral Brushes for Photoshop

Floral brushes are usually great with vector style artwork and they can bring something special to your artwork.

9. 350+ Retro and Vintage Photoshop Brushes

In this post we’ll take a look at 23 sets of Photoshop brushes that will make it easy for you to create your own vintage and retro styled designs. There’s a variety of different types of brushes shown here, so take a look around and see if any might be of use to you.

10. 500+ Watercolor Brushes for Photoshop

Watercolor effects are very popular in web and graphic design right now. Achieving an impressive look can be much easier if you have the right brushes to create the watercolor effect.

11. 500+ Splatter Brushes for Photoshop

Splatter effects can make a big impact on a design. Fortunately, this effect is pretty easy to achieve thanks to Photoshop brushes that are readily available.;This post;features 26 sets of splatter brushes.

12. 200+ Paper Brushes for Photoshop

You don’t have to always use textures to get a paper look. Achieving a paper look can be made much easier with the help of Photoshop brushes.

13. 600+ Nature Brushes for Photoshop

Trees, leaves, skies, clouds – it’s all here. You can use these for photo manipulations or as web design elements as well.

14. 250+ Stains Brushes for Photoshop

20 brush sets with different kind of stains.

15. 75 Sets of Unusual Photoshop Brushes

Some useful brushes that doesn’t fit into one exact category. You’ll find some useful brushes for photo manipulations and photo improvements.

16. 100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

Some random brushes you might find useful.

17. 1000+ Free High Resolution Photoshop Brush Sets

Some of the finest brushes around the web sorted in 10 categories.

18. 50 Must-Have Photoshop Brushes

In this roundup;you’ll find a collection of quality brushes that every designer should find handy.

19. 300+ Vintage Style Textures and Photoshop Brushes

Vintage design, when done well, can make a user feel like they have been transported back in time. Here is a big roundup of textures and Photoshop brushes.

20. 50 Free Photoshop Brush Sets for Modern Design Trends

In this collection, you’ll find over 50 free Photoshop brush sets for current design trends and styles such as vintage, retro, grunge, hand-drawn, swirls, and nature-inspired.

21. 75 Insane High Res Photoshop Brushes

75 sets of high resolution and quality Photoshop brushes.

22. 18 Photoshop Brush Sets for Creating Incredible Lighting Effects

Achieve fantastic lighting effects with these brushes.

23. 64 Beautiful And Free Nature Brush Sets And Vectors

24. 270+ High-Res Rough and Grungey Photoshop Brushes

This collection of hand picked brushes feature various spraypaint, splatters, watercolor brushes and grungey textures all of which are of exceptionally high resolution, making them crucial additions to any designer’s toolbox.

25. 50 Free Photoshop Brush Sets You Should Bookmark

26. High Quality Photoshop Brushes, Resources and Tutorials

Marvelous set of more than 45 high quality Photoshop brushes along with some great tutorials to offer an assortment of techniques for making your next brush set, how to use brush tool and a list of top resources where you an get your favorite brush set.

27. 55 Free Human Brush Sets And Vector Images

28. 300+ Excellent Photoshop Brushes for Creating Painted Effects

Over 300 excellent Photoshop brushes to save you time in creating painted style designs.

29. 200+ Free Abstract Brushes To Use For Light Effect

Use these brushes to relieve your work;in abstract or lightened artwork.

30. 24 New Beautiful Photoshop Brushes

31. 45+ Beautiful Light Abstract Photoshop Brush Sets

A great collection of some really beautiful light abstract brushes, which can be used to enhance your design work. The best part of the 45 sets of brushes is each brush is available for free of charge.

32. 30 High-Quality Grunge Photoshop Brush Sets

In this collection, you’ll find 30 beautiful Photoshop brush sets to help you grunge up your designs. There are over 400 individual brushes here for giving your artwork some grunge.

33. 500+ Free Photoshop Retro Brushes

If you are one of those designers who finds retro fashion fascinating, here’s a set of photoshop brush resources that you can download and use for your designs.

34. 33 Remarkable Photoshop Brushes That You Must Bookmark

35. 850+ Super Cool Tech Brushes for Photoshop

Save time with these brushes while working on your futuristic artwork.

36. Whopping Collection of 600+ Light Effect Photoshop Brushes

37. 30+ Stunning Photoshop Brushes

38. 50+ Free Vintage Photoshop Brush Sets to Download

39. 200+ Free Grunge Photoshop Brushes

40. 50 Insanely Weird but Awesome Photoshop Brushes

50 free Photoshop brushes that are unique, different, and in many cases, down-right strange. In fact, these misfit brushes are united by only one thing: awesomeness.

Silicon Brushes by Xavier Durand – Hollis

Evasion Brush Set by ShiftyJ

Best of BittBox Part 1: High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

Stunning Smoke Effects: 42 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

Dirty Spray Photoshop Brushes

WaterColor Reloaded;by env1ro

Light Beams + Rays Brushes;by redheadstock

Night Lights Brush Set by Muhanad Ajinah

Comet Brushes by Eduardo Rubina Hidalgo

Random Splatter Brushes by KeepWaiting

Teh Smudge Brushes by Michiel Nijenhuis

High Res Dirt Brush Set

Further Resources

61 High Quality And Free xHTML Templates Part 2: Year 2010

Valters Bergspics — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:00:38 +0000

We discussed importance and usefulness about such free templates few days ago, but today we will present updated Part 2 with even more free xhtml templates! How cool is that – check out this article and get more 61 new and free template right now!

Study code, design, style – how templates work in different browsers, what makes them look good – great case study! Evaluate it and bookmark for later use, when you’ll need to complete quick project or check some nifty effect with some cool code.