These icons are released free of charge and can be used for any personal or commercial purpose without attribution. The icons cannot be repackaged or resold as your own work.

All logos and images used on the button designs are copyright to their relevant company or website.

How To Download

To download these icons please click here to visit my Dribbble profile where you’ll find the link to download the icons.

The full list of website icons include:

• Apple
• Dribbble
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Forrst
• Google
• Google Plus
• Gowalla
• iCloud
• Last FM
• LinkedIn
• PayPal
• RSS
• ShareThis
• Skype
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• Yahoo
• YouTbe
• Zerply

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You’ve recently decided to become a full-time freelancer. How are you finding this so far?

I bloody love it! I’ve wanted to work for myself full-time for a long time and if you’ve spoken to me in person in over the last few years I’ll have probably told you so. “Ultimately I’d like to work for myself full-time” was starting to become my catchphrase. So I figured it was about time I took the plunge. I’ve no regrets so far and still have a roof over my head so that’s a win in my book.

Have you found that Twitter has made it easier to get new enquiries from potential clients?

I’ve found twitter to be a great resource for getting the word out about things I’m working on and of course staying in touch with my peers. It’s difficult to gauge how many enquiries come through it though. At the moment I’m finding a lot of my work is coming through collaboration with other designers and general word-of-mouth.

Do you have any advice on mixing freelance and family life when you work from home?

My son is brilliant at getting me away from my computer. He literally comes and gets me out of my office if I haven’t already met him at the front door when he comes home from childcare.

Getting established as full-time self-employed has in some ways been helped my the fact that my wife is doing a degree and is often studying or is on placement in the evenings so I never feel like I’m neglecting anyone. We always ensure we spend the weekends together so all in all my work/life balance is pretty good for our particular situation.

The new Naomi Atkinson website is fantastic. Can you tell us about your collaboration and involvement with the website?

Thank you! I’m really pleased with how naomiatkinsondesign.com turned out. The design was done by Naomi, the photography by Dan Rubin and the front-end development by me. It was a lot of fun to work on, Naomi is a brilliant designer who has great attention to detail and having access to Dans skills with a camera was just icing on the cake really.

Responsiveness was very important to us all. Once Naomi had nailed the look and feel of the design, it became a team effort to perfect how visitors would interact with the site and how it would adjust depending on the context it’s being viewed. I then went to work bring it all to life. I think we’re most proud of the team section. It’s a combination of jQuery and CSS3 transitions with a pure jQuery fallback for browsers that don’t support it. This results in a much smoother experience on mobile devices with native transition support.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you first got into the web design and development industry?

Well I was originally an IT Technician, I worked in the private sector as well as within education (several collages and a university). When I started working in IT we were still repairing computers, changing components and occasionally the old soldering iron would come out, but by around 2004 it had all become pretty much monkey work. A computer broke and you sent it back to Dell and installed a replacement. I was getting really bored!

I’d been looking around for an alternative career and for a while I thought I’d get into CG animation, join some gaming company and achieve stardom creating the next Half-Life. The only problem was that I wasn’t very good at CG animation…

Around this time (2004) I was playing a game called Guild Wars and was part of a guild called War Masters I believe… (might have just made that up, can’t remember) anyway there were about a hundred of us in the guild and we decided we wanted a website and a forum to share strategies and stuff, all very geeky, and I volunteered to build the site.

It all gain momentum from there really. I remember following Dreamweavers help tutorial on building a website, which was in tables, and a good friend of mine Paul Stanton (who I was working with at the time and who was already designing and building websites) hit me round the head with a CSS book and that got me looking into Web Standards.

I landed my first full-time position as a Web Designer/Developer in 2006.

What is your normal workflow for creating a website from start to finish?

If I’m doing the entire site from start to finish, my process is typically research => wireframing => design concepts => front-end build => cms integration => go live.

I aim to keep the client involved throughout the course of the project with an in-person kick-off meeting when possible and a training day/half-day towards the end of the project before go-live so that they can add more content to the site and any last minute bugs can be ironed out.

Like most freelancers I’m always reviewing and attempting to improve my workflow so if something falls down for one project I’ll modify my approach for the next. Nothing is set in stone, it’s all quite flexible.

Above Screenshot: Cambridge Pianoforte website design, front-end development and CMS integration by Ryan Taylor

Are there any other designers in the industry producing work that you really admire?

Oh yeah, tons. Naomi Atkinson, Dan Rubin, Elliot Jay Stocks, Mike Kus, Jessica Hische, Tim Van Damme, Ryan Downie, Oliver Waters, Simon Collison, Meagan Fisher, Sarah Parmenter, Roan Lavery, Jon Hicks to name but a few.

Do you have a particular web design conference or event that you never miss?

Not particularly no. I’ve been to Future of Web Design and Web Apps a few times, DIBI, dConstruct, New Adventures, SXSW. I try to attend as many as I can as I’ve found them to be one of the best ways to network with other designers and developers but it all depends on my schedule really. I’ll be attending New Adventures again in January 2012, Mr Collison throws a cracking conference so looking forward to that one.

Above Screenshot: The new Headscape website – Design, front-end development and CMS integration by Ryan Taylor

What hobbies do you have and do they help you ‘switch off’ from the internet?

I’m learning to play guitar. I’ve actually been “learning” for quite a long time (translate that as I butchered the thing once a week then put it back on it’s stand), but now I’m actually having lessons and have bought a decent guitar – a Yamaha APX 500 – which is my baby and hangs on my office wall. Apart from that when I’m not working I’m spending time with my family.

Finally, do you have any tips for people starting in the industry?

My advice would be to network as much as you can, attend meet-ups in your local area, collaborate with people and learn from them. Conferences are a great place to do this if you can afford them. I was lucky in that I met Paul Boag early in my web career and he’s been a good friend and mentor to me ever since, which is why when the opportunity arose for me to mentor someone myself I was happy to do so. I’m currently sharing my insights with a nice Canadian chap called Chad McDonald who wants to expand his skills into front-end development as well as design.

Thank you so much for taking the time to take part in our interview Ryan

Havoc Inspired | Follow Ryan on Twitter

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The mega talented Mike Kus has redesigned Gift Rocket, the San Fransico based online gift card website. As soon as you see the site it stands out as being one of Mike’s designs with a sublime subtle colour scheme and quirky illustrations.

2. Reverend Danger

Reverend Danger are a digital agency who specialise in harmonious interactive design and their website showcases their skills. Scroll down to page to view some of their animations and interactive website elements. Top work!

3. Autoglym High Definition Wax

The wonderful mix of strong red and dark grey colour scheme is complimented by clear product photography on the Autoglym High Definition Wax website.

4. Ala

Wow! The Ala Studio website shows off their bold design talent and creative coding with a memorable website. Scroll down their website and enjoy the various effects and visual delights!

5. MyChoicePad

The guys at FHOKE have rolled our another lovely design, this time MyChoicePad gets the benefit of their talents with a clear and easy to read site that does a great job of promoting their app.

6. Artua

Artua Design Agency create icons, websites, logos and user interfaces with a very high level of quality. Their portfolio speaks for itself!

7. Mathieu Clauss

Mathieu’s portfolio site is just as good as his client work featuring a lovely colour scheme and geometric design.

8. Nizo App

You’ve probably already seen the Nizo App website but if you haven’t click the image below and scroll down their site. Pretty incredible, eh?

9. Havoc Inspired

Ryan Taylor has recently started freelancing after working for Headscape and his new site is a superb example of a single page portfolio site.

10. Cake Sweet Cake

The Cake Sweet Cake website makes their products look good enough to eat. Mmmm, cakes.

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Firstly, a little background information…

At the start of January this year I was unfortunate enough to have my hard drive fail on my computer. Usually the panic that comes with this kind of thing is often followed by relief when you restart the machine or swap a faulty power cable and you are back in business! Not this time. Nothing I tried would get my hard drive to boot and a trip to my local friendly computer repair shop confirmed it was well and truly broken. That is when the panic really sets it.

You try and think how long ago you’ve backed up your files to an external hard drive. You realise you’ve got urgent client deadlines to meet. You worry your online backups may not have worked – after all, when was the last time you checked? And to top things of, if you need your computer to earn a living you can expect the inevitable lost couple of days while you reinstall all your software and files on a new operating system. Not a pleasant experience at all!

When this happened earlier this year to me I was quite lucky. Most of my music and photos (with the exception of about a months worth of recent files) were safely backed up to an external hard drive. My client work too was backed up both to a hard drive and via an online backup service. Two in fact! I use Dropbox for the active client work I am working on and also Carbonite for pretty much everything else on my computer.  A bit of a belt and braces setup to cover all bases as much as possible. Now it was time to see how they got on restoring my files…

How did Dropbox do?

Dropbox had everything synced and up to date (about 10 GB of files) and downloaded them to my computer in lightning quick time. That has to be the thing that impressed me most about Dropbox – the speed. It had uploaded all my files before the hard drive failure and downloaded them again in just a couple of hours. Perfect and highly recommended!

I was so impressed I’ve upgraded my Dropbox account to allow me to backup even more files. Having the ability to sync between more than one computer is a wonderful feature too. If I was to mention a slight downside to Dropbox it would be the large amount of system memory it uses to sync (either uploading or downloading) if there is a large queue of files but it does get the job done quickly! Learn more…

How did Carbonite do?

Carbonite had the bigger job of restoring about 150 GB of files. Because my internet connection is quite slow it hadn’t quite backed up everything and was missing around the most recent 10% of files. This isn’t Carbonite’s fault, more the fact that my broadband was a bit too slow to keep up to date with it. Something I should have considered more carefully in retrospect.

The restoration process was not as easy as Dropbox but once I’d worked out how it worked I had my files downloading and it restored most things in around 3 days on my slow connection. The speeds were not as fast as Dropbox but you are given unlimited space which is handy for larger backups. I’d recommend both Dropbox and Carbonite as they work in the background and give valuable peace of mind. Learn more…

How did my manual backups do?

I was lucky to have pretty much my whole hard drive backed up to an external drive too. The trouble is it can take an absolute age to back everything up (often more than a day) so I’d got in to the habit of doing it just once a month. All my files were safely preserved but I was missing a few weeks worth. A better solution would have been a system like Time Machine for the Mac. I do most of my design and development on a PC (don’t hold it against me!) and I’ve yet to find something that works as smoothly as this.

If you’ve got any recommendations for software like this on a PC please leave a comment at the end of this article! I now backup once a week to an external hard drive (usually after finishing work on a Friday afternoon) and leave it running until it has completed. Each week I swap between two different hard drives rather than trusting just a single drive with all the data.

What other things are there to consider?

I think I was quite lucky. Admittedly I didn’t get all my files back but everything important was recovered. It is all well and good having both online and manual backups in place but what happens if they go wrong?

Fire: A fire near your computer could damage the main hard drive and any external hard drives you may have in the vicinity. I’d recommend storing your external hard drives in a safe place whenever possible.

Theft: A horrible thing to consider but if your computer equipment was stolen would you have a way of getting your data back? It may be worth considering storing your external hard drives in a secure safe or even in another location.

Syncing Problems: Once an online backup system is setup the idea is you leave it to run in the background. Consider the possibility that the sync could stop, get corrupt or even reach your storage limit. Keep a close eye on these regularly to check files are backing up properly. Since having my hard drive fail I’m definitely on top of backups more. I got off lightly last time and don’t want to have to go through that again!

Below are some links to useful backup software and resources which I hope you find useful. So don’t delay, backup TODAY!

Backup Software

• Dropbox
• Carbonite
• Backblaze
• Mozy
• Backup Direct

Backup Links and Resources

• World Backup Day

What About You?

Have you experience the loss of your data and files? Did you manage to restore everything you needed? Have you had any good or bad experiences with backup software? I’d love you to comment below and share any stories or advice!

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I’ve found myself using their brushes more and more over the last few months so I thought I’d put together a collection of some of my favourite free brushes from their collection. I hope you find them useful!

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Gorgeous colour scheme, textures and attention to detail in the logo from the recently launched Vector Mill – check it out!

2. Strawberry Jam

Mmmm… this website looks good enough to eat! Strawberryj.am is a new service designed to show trends from your followers rather than the whole of Twitter. The site has some lovely illustrations.

3. WindowSeat App

The main reason I’ve included the website for the recently launched WindowSeat iPhone app is because the icon is gorgeous. The attention to detail on the colours and highlights would grace any iPhone home screen.

4. Pointless Corp.

Pretty much everything about the Pointless Corp website is dripping with quality! The textures, mixture of subtle and bold colours and illustration all stand out as highlights.

5. Mobile Me

The new Mobile Me home page / log in page is packed full of lovely little effects. The bold colours and glow effects show off the talents of Apple’s design team.

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Can you tell us a little bit about how you got in to the world of web design?

I actually got started in the world of design in 2001 as a lithographic printer in the Armed Forces. I would spend half of my time operating the presses and the other in the prepress suite designing and prepping the artwork. It was here that I was first introduced to programs such as Illustrator and Photoshop.

It wasn’t until I was tasked to design and build an interactive CD-ROM that I first encountered HTML. I muddled through and eventually came up with an end product that was passable but more importantly I was hooked – this was something that was in complete contrast to the static nature of print work and I loved it.

I think like most in this industry I then experimented with different techniques, programs, languages and the more I dabbled the more I wanted to learn. Eventually I left the Armed Forces to concentrate solely on web design and the rest as they say is history!

What was your original inspiration behind Premium Pixels?

There wasn’t too much of a motive behind Premium Pixels originally other than to experiment with design in ways which I couldn’t necessarily with clients. Premium Pixels served, and still does, as a place I can justifiably play around with elements I have never been tasked to design before or try out new design ideas in general.

How do you find the time to create so many top quality freebies so regularly?

It can be very tough do so consistently but the only solution is to make it. I typically set aside some time each morning to play around with a new ideas before concentrating on “real work” later. I tend to work on the larger freebies over a period of time making small additions each day. That and I work very long hours

What plans do you have for Premium Pixels in 2011?

2011 is going to be a great year for Premium Pixels. There will be a small facelift shortly which I’m very excited about and the freebies will continue to come thick and fast. I have had a number of requests from other designers looking to contribute their own files which I will also be looking at.

Another new addition for 2011 will be the introduction of tutorials (another frequent request) so designers can get a better understanding of how I have designed a particular element rather than just downloading the final result.

You’ve recently started freelancing full time. How have you found the first few months?

So far so good, I’ve managed to take on a grand total of 0 clients, all planned of course! When I took the plunge I vowed to spend some time working on my own projects before concentrating on client work – it has been great, a very rewarding process. I do however have a number of upcoming client projects which I can’t wait to get stuck into!

Do you find it easy to separate client work with your own projects?

Finding the time to work on both can be extremely difficult. It’s also very frustrating when you find yourself spending more time on one than the other. Ultimately the trick is to take on client work that you will enjoy as it will limit resentment – easier said than done in a lot of cases.

I try to limit my client involvement to just one project at a time. I find this beneficial for both myself and the client as they get my undivided attention which generally results in a better final product. It also allows enough time to work on personal projects in the “downtime” of the client project e.g. the days between client feedback etc.

Your WordPress themes are proving very popular on ThemeForest! What do you think makes a theme popular on marketplaces?

In general I think a well designed theme that will suit a variety of purposes has the potential to become popular. More often that not that means not over-designing the theme, just giving it a sense of character while not taking away from its ability to be customised.

What theme options and customisations have proven most popular with people purchasing your themes?

So far the most popular features/requests have been for shortcodes. Shortcodes, when used in moderation, are great for allowing the non-technical user the ability to add styled content to the theme with very little effort – buttons, columns and alerts are proving particularly popular.

Are there any designers in the industry that you really admire?

Far too many to list! Naturally I admire those designers that have huge ability in areas where I would like to improve – illustration, icons and logo design specifically. Sean Farrell, Pasquale D’Silva and the SoftFacade team spring to mind.

What hobbies do you you have to help switch off from the internet

I try to spend as much time with my dog as possible, being a Siberian Husky he needs a lot of exercise – perfect for getting me away from the screen! Other than that hobbies have taken a back seat since the arrival of my 3 month old son. I’m sure any parent will agree, finding time for yourself can be difficult in the early days… but I wouldn’t have it any other way

Thanks for being interviewed Orman. All the very best for 2011

Premium Pixels | www.ormanclark.com | Follow Orman on Twitter

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With any kind of artistic work, there are always trends to follow or break. Web design is no different. Each year, or even each season, brings along new trends.

1) Minimalistic layouts are in

Making people click through a thousand different links before they can get where they want to be is so last year. In 2010, it has been all about making sure that people get all the information that they need, right up front, in a clean minimalist design. In some cases, this means a single page, while in other cases there might be a few pages. Either way, you never have to go searching.

2) Typography is all the rage

Making sure that your type is in, and even using different typography techniques to add dimension to the site is one of the biggest trends of web design in 2010. With everything from typography in tag clouds to using fun and funky fonts through the site, making sure that the type and the site work well together is very important.

3) More personalized design

Everyone wants their website to stand out. You want people to remember you (and your site of course!), otherwise there wouldn’t be a point to having the website. Because of this, people are taking different approaches than before.

Having a design that looks a little more hand drawn is one way that many people are achieving this. If you are an artist, this is an exceptionally great way to go!

4) Over-sized headers and footers

Though not our favorite of design choices, the trend in 2010 has been to make everything larger. With huge headers that take up a large portion of the page before someone has to scroll down, and sometimes even larger footers, along with huge amounts of information, it is felt that you will make a great impression. To us, though, this just feels like a ploy to make it seem like there’s more on the page than there really is.

5) Social Networking

If you don’t have links to your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or Digg accounts (along with a huge variety of other social networking sites), many people are starting to wonder if you are legit. It has become almost a necessity to have these on your site in 2010. This is a trend that we don’t see going anywhere — social networking is just starting to take off!

6) Silly, fun or informative intros

Along with social networking, many people are starting to let loose a little. Many websites have an intro area, either at the top of the site or along one of the sides. This is where they can tell the reader or customer who they are, what they like, and anything else.

Whether you love or hate the way that the industry decided to head this year, it is good to know what is going on and keep constantly educated on web design. If you are planning to make a new website, keep these trends in mind. Whether you plan to follow them by the book, or shatter them completely, you need to know the rules.

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New website creation service makes sense for designers and their finances

The Smarter Web Company is offering a new service which gives designers the opportunity to fully brand a powerful online content management system (CMS) and use it as a quick and easy way to build professional quality sites at a fraction of the usual cost to their business. Designers can charge their clients any fee they want, including a monthly charge for on-going CMS access and website hosting, with the potential to create a regular income for their business.

Additionally, the hassle of actually building a site is removed, and designers are left with more time to do what they do best – the design itself.

Competition prize

To celebrate the launch of this service, My Smarter Website is giving away a free account worth £240 which enables you to build up to 10 websites in a month. For more details of the account’s benefits see below and also visit http://www.mysmartercms.co.uk

For your chance to win simply send an email to: competitions@mysmartercms.co.uk writing ‘CMS competition’ in the subject line.

Fixed price, increased profits

The branded service comes at a very low fixed price, which includes a free markup service (see below). So designers can charge the client whatever they like, and pocket the difference. This could mean vastly increased profits for a design business’ website creation services.

Free design markup service

Uniquely, a free service to take a design produced by an agency and code it into a website is included within the low monthly charge. This means a web designer doesn’t have to potentially pay thousands to a third party for doing the build element, and retains much greater control over delivery times.

Profit example

The sites are of a high quality and ordinarily a design agency could charge upwards of £3,000 to build something similar. If an agency signs up to an account with My Smarter CMS they get an agreed number of websites for a monthly charge (the packages start at 10 websites for £240 each month) and as we markup the sites for no additional charge the potential profit is huge.

Because the CMS is fully branded, and essentially ‘theirs’, the agency can quote normal fees as the involvement of My Smarter CMS is transparent to the client.

For example, an agency signs up to the bottom package which gives them 10 websites at £240 per month. They charge their clients £3,000 per website as a design and build fee and then £30 per month for hosting and the CMS access. The total year one figure would be £33,600 and after a cost of their time to design the websites, manage their clients and the charge of £2,880 by My Smarter CMS. The total profit (not accounting for the agencies time) would be £30,720!

Building up a regular monthly income

Once a client’s website has been built, that client then has the option of using the branded CMS tool to manage their site on a daily basis. Again, the designer can charge the client whatever they choose for this and because on-going access to the CMS is included in a low fixed fee package, it can help remove one of the biggest uncertainties involved in running a design business: not having a fixed, regular monthly income.

There are several packages on offer, tailored to suit the very smallest of design businesses, to large design agencies handling a high volume of business.

We think this is a great deal and makes a lot of business sense for individual designers and agencies alike. For more information take a look at http://www.mysmartercms.co.uk/ and call/mail us for more information and to discuss terms.

Good luck with the competition!

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Can you tell us a little bit about how you first got into the web design and development industry?

I learnt my first HTML playing an online game called Neopets. It had this “create a webpage for your pet” feature which I tweaked obsessively. I then decided to start a real site for my friends where we could add funny quotes and that sort of thing. Then I started getting a few people asking me to do websites for their businesses and it kind of went on from there.

Do you consider yourself to be mainly a designer or developer (or a bit of both?)

I’m definitely more comfortable coding because it’s much less subjective. I do design when there’s nobody else to do it, and I love doing it for my own personal projects (because there’s no client to please), but I generally prefer working with a really good designer.

How did you find going back to full time employing after freelancing? Was it a difficult decision to make?

It was an incredibly difficult decision to make. I’d been freelancing since I was 16, full time since I was 18, and I really enjoyed it but I found it almost impossible to switch off at the end of the day. I resented spending a disproportionate amount of my time doing all the admin stuff that comes with freelancing rather than getting stuck into some code. It was also pretty lonely, and I was desperate to work alongside other people. It’s nice not having to worry about that sort of thing any more.

What was the most important thing you learned while freelancing?

I guess the most valuable thing I learnt was how to be self sufficient. I had to learn how to do everything for the first time very quickly, and deal with all the mistakes I made along the way. You don’t get a guaranteed paycheck on the same day every month, and if you don’t get up in the morning and get the work done, you don’t get paid.

What do you think about the current state of education for web design and development courses?

The majority of students I’ve spoken to feel disillusioned with the courses they’re taking. A lot of the content is so out of date than when they leave, they’re not equipped with the right skills and really struggle to get a job. I’ve talked and written a lot on the problems I had when deciding whether to go to university. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a course that wasn’t going to be value for money, and I think I made the right decision at the time by not going. In my experience, a lot of web development courses try to dumb things down to make them easier to teach and mark, but in the process they abstract things so they’re no longer relevant. For example, web design is part of the IT curriculum for secondary school students in England, but a lot of students are being taught how to make websites in Microsoft Powerpoint, or in some cases, in tables in Microsoft Word.

How would you improve things with current web development courses?

The best courses I’ve seen have really close ties with industry professionals, and adopt curriculums such as WaSP’s InterACT curriculum and Opera’s Web Standards curriculum.

I did a Q&A with students in Damascus High School and they were studying InterACT’s curriculum and were very enthusiastic about it. Ideally I’d like to see an institution like the Open University offer one of these courses. Open University courses are cheaper than traditional university courses, and you can study remotely while you work, so they’re incredibly accessible.

Can you tell us about Scrunchup and how it began

Scrunchup began in 2008 when I was talking to some friends about how there isn’t really anywhere for young people to go when they’re starting out. There are a lot of negative stereotypes associated with young developers, and there’s also a lot of bad advice, so I wanted somewhere to put stuff that people like me would find interesting.

Do you have a particular favourite web design conference or event that you never miss?

I have quite a few. There’s dConstruct in Brighton in the summer which is nice because the content is quite theoretical which makes it different to other conference. I spoke at the Web Developer’s Conference in October which was great fun because the majority of the attendees are students and it’s in Bristol which is a lovely city. I went to my first Full Frontal conference a couple of weeks ago which was cool and of course there’s Future of Web Design which I look forward to every year because it’s such a massive event.

What hobbies do you have and do they help you ‘switch off’ from the internet?

It’s difficult to switch off because my work is also my hobby, but I’ve always been into drawing and photography and I’ve been trying to get more of that into some of the work I’m doing. I also enjoy cooking and would like to get more seriously into that, it’s just the washing up at the end that puts me off!

Thanks very much Anna!

Anna is a front end developer at Message in Brighton. You can also follow her on Twitter

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