In this roundup we have collected 500+ free smoke photoshop brushes and few photoshop tutorials of smoke effects. Enjoy!

Particle Smoke Photoshop Brushes(126)

Here are 43 free social media icon sets. Enjoy!

freebie 30 fresh social media icons

Twitter is most definitely one of the best forms of online marketing, and we all know it. It offers a way to mingle with your fans in short and sweet messages, as well as promote your sites content, your companies promotional deals or something completely different! For this reason, it is generally a good idea to have an account. But is Twitter for designers really a helpful resource that we need, or is it just another way to get distracted and find excuses to not do work?

Sometimes, when I’m brainstorming ideas about what to write an article about, I like to turn to Twitter and just ask my followers what they would be interested in reading about. I did that last week, and got a number of different answers. The one that really struck me the most came from Jason Gross, who suggested that I write “A post about giving your clients what they need, whether they ask for it or not”.

Actually, that’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and probably something that a lot of designers struggle with – especially freelancers like myself, whose clients tend to come primarily from the world of small enterprise. When it comes to websites, for example, I’ve found that many of these clients are just looking to get a site up and running. They are either new businesses that are just launching, or sometimes established businesses that have not had a web presence, or who have a website that is clearly old and outdated (both in terms of content and design)

Check our giant collection of 2000 free photoshop brushes. If you like this post also consider these popular resources. Enjoy!

500 Watercolor Photoshop Brushes
75 Sets of Unusual Photoshop Brushes
350 Retro and Vintage Photoshop Brushes

25 Ink Brushes

We have heard the DesignM.ag community voice and we are responding. Here are 2000 free textures for your viewing pleasure!
17 scratched and scraped textures

I’m going to start this discussion of by revealing a secret about my own design work: I don’t have a process. At least, I don’t have a rock solid, time tested step by step formula that I follow for all my projects. That’s not to say that I shoot from the hip or fly by the seat of my pants, to use a couple of cliched old sayings. I certainly take the time to think things through and to be both thorough and methodical in my work.

I just don’t follow the same steps every time.

There are a couple of different reasons for this. The first is the nature of the project. Using web design as a primary example, there are some projects which just lend themselves better to being done primary through a combination of my code editor of choice (Coda) and the browser, using Photoshop only to create really simple graphics. For other projects, however, I just find that it’s better to start mocking things up in Photoshop.

Of course, depending on how I begin the project, the follow through will also be different. If I start in the browser, development will progress in one way and if I start in Photoshop, it will develop in a slightly different way.

Today I have put together the largest collection of free Photoshop patterns DesignM.ag has ever offered. Enjoy!

Flowers Patters for Photoshop (6)

Books offer graphic designers, illustrators and typographers a great way to expand their portfolios. There are endless possibilities that can be explored when designing for book covers, and often are explored, as can be seen in this post.

I’ve had an increased interest in book covers recently after putting together another showcase at The Inspiration Blog on minimalistic book covers, since then I have been browsing for book cover inspiration daily so thought I would share some of my findings here at DesignM.ag. This showcase presents a collection of 64 typographic book covers, all of which are interesting and are genuinely unique. The books themselves are crossed between a number of

Coney Island of the Mind

Buy on Amazon

Bundle Hunt announced a treasure that is sure to get any designers mouth salivating. For those who don’t know, Bundle Hunt is a premium resource pack aimed at empowering the creative community, offering more than $1,400 worth of apps, templates, icons, eBooks, hosting plans and premium memberships all for less than $50!

The bundle, which includes some of the most prestigious brands in the business, began on August 2nd and will continue through the 16th.

Here is a line up worth checking out!

Billings

Billings is a time billing program for professionals who want to simplify quoting, invoicing and time tracking. Includes customizable templates for those who want their invoices to make a good first impression.