freebies | it's a small web

June geometry

June 1, 2011 § Leave a comment

By now you might have guessed that we are obsessed with a number of things. Some of them are fabrics and geometry. So this month’s background is a sweet combination of the two. Created by fabric house Osborne and Little, balyan is a great geometric patterned fabric. It’s pattern of interlocking cubes is inspired by ottoman design. In fact, it has got its name from the Balyan family, a dynasty of Armenian architects famous for designing and building some of the most important Ottoman buildings in Istanbul.

Follow @itsasmallweb

The desktop wallpaper project

May 29, 2011 § 2 Comments

The fantastic the fox is black design blog plays host to a great little project: the desktop wallpaper project.

They invite illustrators, graphic designers and artists to create unique desktop wallpapers.

Each wallpaper is available for various screen resolutions, including, of course, iPhone, iPad and PSP screens.

Love it!

See also:

May day vinyl

May 1, 2011 § 1 Comment

May is here and it’s time to change our background. This time we are in a retro mood and we ‘re celebrating music. Hence our vinyl background by artist Stephen Klise, found on pixel girl presents. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Read it elsewhere

April 20, 2011 § Leave a comment

Check them out:

A dramatic reading of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, complete with a beret and (e)spanish accent (video) – kottke
Is the cupcake dead? – Johnson Banks
John Lennon’s bitter letter to Linda McCartney – flavorwire]
Do you know how much power your appliances use? (interactive infograph) – GE visualization
The evolution of web design – mashable
He’s an actor, he’s a writer, he’s a musician: download Hugh Laurie’s new blues track for free – pop culture brain
What if Barbie was real-size – msnbc
The latest tumblr to take the world by storm – hipster animals
If logos were honest – buzzfeed

Create stunning word cloud infographs

April 2, 2011 § 4 Comments

Sometimes everybody is in on the secret, and somehow you are left out. That’s the case with me and wordle. So, if there’s anyone else in this world who hasn’t heard about wordle yet (which I doubt), this is what it does: it is a web app that creates beautiful word clouds from any text or URL you submit. It allows you to change fonts, colors and layout. It basically allows you to create stunning infographs based on word occurance to use in an essay, presentation or website and blog post. Try wordle-ing articles, novels, song lyrics, letters, ads or whatever else comes to mind.

It is very addictive; I’ve just spent the last half an hour wordle-ing the lyrics of some of my old favorites. Can you guess what they are? (Highlight the text to view the artists and songs)

Highlight: PJ Harvey “The Mess We’re In”

Highlight: Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Maps”, Red Hot Chilli Peppers “Under The Bridge”

See more word clouds after the jump « Read the rest of this entry »

Cool patterns

April 1, 2011 § Leave a comment

Our latest background for April (which some of you might have seen a bit earlier, oops) comes from Pattern Cooler. It is an amazing web service that allows you to edit online and download hundreds of seamless background patters for your desktop, twitter account, blog or mobile device. You can download the ready-made backgrounds as they are, or edit their colors and pattern size. It has a huge selection, but we particularly liked the minimal, japanese and geometrical series.

For April we decided to go retro. Find our background here.

See also:

Origami social icons

March 17, 2011 § 2 Comments

There is such a plethora of downloadable icons for blogs, websites and windows desktops, that I get really bored browsing through them. Plus, they all look so similar to me. But these little cuties caught my eye. Which is not surprising, since my love for origami is well documented. And what’s more, these are completely free, even in their vector .eps format. You can download them here.

Writer’s block

March 1, 2011 § 4 Comments

I’ve got writer’s block. Hence, the blog background for March is a blank notebook page. Well, with some meaningless doodles on it.

We used these free fonts for the doodles: mtf doodles, 2 Peas GG Love Me, VTKS Easy Way.

Insomnia? Probably your computer screen’s fault

February 17, 2011 § 3 Comments

You’ve been in front of your computer until the wee hours. When you do get to bed, exhausted, you find yourself unable to sleep. I know I can relate to this, especially since lately I keep blogging at night. This kind of insomnia might be due to the blue light emitted by computer screens (and all other screens: laptops, iPads, TV sets, etc). The human organism understands blue light as daylight, which disrupts the usual hormonal mechanisms that regulate our sleep.

According to the Washington Post “humans evolved to respond to darkness by producing melatonin, the hormone that regulates the sleep cycle. But our light-sensitive pineal gland near the center of the brain responds to blue light by suppressing melatonin, causing us to wake up. When we see too much blue light in the late evening, it delays or disrupts the melatonin rush”.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is a remedy.

f.lux is a free, downloadable software solution (for Windows, OS X and Linux), that makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day. So basically your computer screen mimics natural light.I ‘ve just installed it, and the light is indeed warmer. Whether I’ll sleep as a baby tonight, I’ll let you know.

boingboing via book of joe via Washington Post

See also:

Please, don’t wake me

Hours as colors

February 16, 2011 § 4 Comments

This is one of the coolest ideas ever: The colour clock is an online clock and a downloadable screen saver (for Mac users only) that represents time as a hexadecimal color.

Let me explain. Do you know your RGBs?

Standing for Red Green Blue, RGB is the color model that combines these three colors to create all the rest. In the web, all colors are represented in hexadecimal RGB codes, ie sets of three numbers (value of red, value of green, value of blue). What else is represented as a set of three numbers? Time (value of hours, value of minutes, value of seconds). What if we combined the two codes? Quite obvious now that I mention it, but quite ingenious for the person who thought of it first. Respect.

This clock is magnificent both conceptually and aesthetically. Perfection.

See also:

Read it elsewhere

February 9, 2011 § Leave a comment

Miscellanea:

Discover for yourself how easy it is to become unemployed and homeless in the US. Play Spent. – spent
One week before its official release, you can listen to PJ Harvey’s new album Let England Shake in its entirety online – npr
In the same vein, and just for 48 hours, you can download the Strokes’ new single “Under Cover of Darkness” for free (starting Feb. 9) – the strokes
BTW, what is the most pirated media? Hint: it’s not music – design taxi
Why the Twitter Whale and other “cute” fail pages are a design and service crime – fastcodesign
What kind of Twitter user are you? – thought catalog
We can now see both sides of the sun, at the same time – dvice
You’ve seen the Mondrian cake, now see what an algorithm created Mondrian-like painting looks like – kottke

$fractal-mondrian$

Marimekko sweetheart

January 17, 2011 § 3 Comments

Once there was Liberty’s of London. Now there is Marimekko,
the leading Finnish textile and clothing design company that’s been around since the 50’s but continues to be the favorite of designers around the globe.

Browsing their site is always an inspiration, but the opportunity for this post came from another site: Always Mod. Always Mod is the ultimate marimekko eshop for anyone based in US – and in addition to their vast selection of textiles and other products, they have an index of free downloadable desktop wallpapers.