Bookmarks for December 16th

These are my Jumptags for December 16th

• The Rules | Brain Rules | – Brain Rules by John J. Medina is a multimedia project explaining how the brain works. It includes a book, a feature-length documentary film, and a series of interactive tutorials.
• How To Design Custom PowerPoint Templates for E-Learning (Plus 8 Free Templates) » The Rapid eLearning Blog – Tom Kuhlmann offers up more Powerpoint templates and a how to for using a Web site for inspiration.
• 50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design – Smashing Magazine – Round-ups of beautiful and useful icons are almost legendary here, on Smashing Magazine. While some readers complain about the annoying list -style of some of our…

Bookmarks for December 7th through December 9th

These are my Jumptags for December 7th through December 9th:

• 25+ Useful Infographics for Web Designers | Webdesigner Depot – Infographics can be a great way to quickly reference information. Instead of pouring over figures and long reports to decipher data, an infographic can
• Google Wave Explained In Two Minutes (CLIP) (GOOG) – In the spirit of The Common Craft Show, here's an explanation of Google Wave in plain English. It's good enough until Lee LeFever does one better.
• Free Icons | Icon Fever – Icon Fever is a new directory for icons. This is the link to the free icons.

Icons to get you ready for turkey, snow & ho-ho-ho

Because you all know just how much I love a good icon set, I’m sending along a new list of icons to get you ready for the holidays.  I received all of these either through an email subscription or an RSS feed that I read.  So, thanks to Tutorial 9 and SitePoint for making this elf happy.  As always, read the licensing and read me files to determine just how you can use these guys.

Fall & Thanksgiving

With this icon pack from Tutorial 9, you get 5 icons in PNG format: leaves, pilgrims, a pumpkin, a tree, and a turkey.  Who doesn’t love a goofy turkey that can be repurposed as a Virginia Tech hokie?

Download from: http://www.tutorial9.net/resources/free-icon-pack-november-seasonal-ic ons/

Christmas Pack 1

This adorable little pack of icons from Chico21 on DeviantArt comes with 8 icons for you to use.  They are in PNG format (my favorite!), and you get a Christmas tree, reindeer, stocking with candy cane, chicken and hen (always a  holiday necessity), Santa mouse, Mama and baby bears, and a present.

Download from http://chicho21net.deviantart.com/art/Christmas-Dock-Icons-72393843

Christmas Pack 2

Twenty icons this time from the “Real Christmas 2005″ pack.  These are from Enchanted Labs and come in 3 flavors — no, not cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla — Mac, Windows, and PNG.  If you would like to use these in your system icons, then feel free to use the Mac or Windows options.  But as I always suggest, download the PNGs for the most flexibility in your development projects.

Download from http://enhancedlabs.com/index.php/labnotes/comments/the_real_christmas _05_reloaded/

Bookmarks for November 18th

These are my Jumptags for November 18th

• Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day: Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009: The Final List – Here is the final list of the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009, compiled from the contributions of 278 learning professionals – from education and workplace learning – worldwide. Thanks to all who contributed their Top 10 Tools for learning. Below is …
• Christmas Dock Icons by ~chicho21net on deviantART – 20 icons for the holidays available in PNG.
• The Real Christmas 2005 Icon Set – 20 icons for the holidays available in Mac, PC and PNG.
• Free Icon Pack: November Seasonal Icons | Tutorial9 – Today we share a free icon pack by the designers over at IconShock inspired by Fall and Thanksgiving: 5 Icons in total including a Turkey, Pumpkin, Pilgrims, and the changing color of leaves.
• The History of the Internet in a Nutshell – A short, understandable, and highly visual explanation of the history of the Internet.

Bookmarks for November 4th through November 5th

These are my Jumptags for November 4th through November 5th:

• 20 Merry Icon Sets For Christmas – Icon sets for Christmas and holidays.
• Elements of Design: Type – Type is a fundamental part of any design it appears in. It can be used as text to read, as a shape and as a visual element where the choice of typeface conveys an emotion or mood. Type, when used well doesn’t need a photograph or illustration to back…
• Showcase of Big, Bold Typography – Big, bold typography can be very powerful for conveying a message or just for achieving a desired look. In this post we'll showcase more than 25 items that feature big, bold typography. To see more work from a particular artist/designer, click on the…
• 4 Principles of Good Design for Websites – One of the areas of focus that I’ve taken into all my designs are the four major design principles. They include: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.
• 6 Ways To Take Your Webdesign From Good To Great – In a previous article I went into detail about the important roles that contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity play in webdesign. This article will piggy back on those principles as I examine 6 ways you can take your webdesign from good to gre…

Bookmarks for October 26th through November 2nd

These are my Jumptags for October 26th through November 2nd:

• Spooktacular Pumpkin Vector Pack (100 Free Vectors) – Here's an unexpected Halloween Treat for the Tutorial9 Community! This is a HUGE set of 100 Free Spooky Pumpkin Vectors on Halloween Eve!
• Free Vintage & Serpent Go Media Vectors | Tutorial9 – Our Pals over at Go Media are releasing a massive new set of Premium Vector Art. Why's this matter to you? You get a taste of it For Free.
• Project Project Planning & Management for ISD and HPT Efforts – Project Planning & Management presentation at ISPI Spring Conference 2009 by Guy W Wallace, CPT

Bookmarks for October 13th through October 15th

These are my Jumptags for October 13th through October 15th:

• Weebly – Create a free website and a free blog – Weebly has now added an education section. Weebly is perfect for creating classroom websites, student e-portfolios, and websites for assigned projects.
• Free Adobe Dreamweaver Tutorial | CSS Tutorial for Creating Layouts in Dreamweaver | Layers Magazine – This tutorial covers the process of building a CSS-based layout from scratch using Dreamweaver. Great beginner tutorial.
• Free Adobe Dreamweaver Tutorial | CSS Tutorial – Basics of Working with Cascading Style Sheets | Layers Magazine – This tutorial covers the basics of creating CSS in Dreamweaver using the CSS Rule dialog. Great intro.
• Adobe Flash Tutorial | Creating an interactive story in Adobe Flash part 2 – A simple tutorial for moving around Flash CS3. Part 2.
• Adobe Flash Tutorial | Creating an interactive story in Adobe Flash – A simple tutorial in two parts for moving around Flash CS3.
• Flash CS4 |Timeline Animation | Motion Editor | Layers Magazine – With Flash CS4 now has auto-keyframing, a full-featured motion editor, and—most importantly—the ability to animate each property of an object separately from one another.
• Open Access Educational Technology journals – George Veletsianos – One of the resources developed for my students is a listing of open access journals (name, url, and RSS feed) that publish papers on the nexus between technology and education (educational technology, instructional design, e-learning, online distance…
• Best Time-Tracking Application: Klok – Time management – Lifehacker – Earlier last week we asked you to share your favorite time-tracking applications and then we rounded them up for your review.
• The speed of information – The speed of information between neurons.
• 33 Websites For Vector Images Download | Pro Blog Design – Here is a list of free vector images for download, if you're designer and look for vector images for your design project, you can simply download this…
• 3 Ways To Find The Best Website Color Scheme – Learn how to pick a website color scheme that keeps visitors engaged. Includes a list of questions to ask clients and a color psychology cheat sheet.
• Using John Keller’s ARCS model to motivate online learners « Onlignment – ARCS provides a good summary of the issues to be considered when designing a learning intervention. In particular it makes sense to me when putting together a live online learning event.
• Live Online Learning – a facilitators guide « Onlignment – To download your free copy of “Live Online Learning – a facilitator’s guide” just sign up for the free newsletter.
• Healthcare Napkins wins World’s Best Presentation Contest 2009 | SlideShare Blog – Thousands of presentations are uploaded to SlideShare everyday. But some catch your eye from the moment they get uploaded. Tha's the case with the winning
• 5 Steps to Slide Design for Non-Designers by Ellen Finkelstein | SlideShare Blog – I’ve come up with 5 steps that you can take to create a presentation that will work, even if you’re not a designer.

More icon love. Company’s coming.

If you remember, in my first post, I explained why I loved icon sets and told you what to look for in icons . . . particularly those that are free.  In the next post, I gave you a heads-up on animal icons that are real nice and real cute.  Continuing the series on icons that I love, today, I have for you two sets that are directed toward businesses and corporate uses.

Business sense

In this icon set, there are 10 icons that are primarily directed toward business and money.  As you can see from the screen capture to the right, you can download the images individually for Windows and Buddy icons or as PNGs in 2 sizes.  I recommend the PNGs in both sizes, because it gives you options when you go to use them in your web pages, presentations or word processing documents.  Admittedly, there are a couple of unusual and atypical business images in the set, including a casino roulette wheel. Go figure?

When you click on any of these images, they will open into a new browser window with the image sitting all alone by itself.  To download them, all you need to do is right click (control+click on a Mac) and then choose “Save image as…”

Available at Icon Archive

Project Run-and-get-them

This second set of icons are courtesy of Smashing Magazine, which always and I’m mean always has good freebies.  (The theme I’m using right now for my blog is courtesy of Smashing Mag.)  This set was designed by Navdeep Raj and includes 18 images that are targeted toward project management, including icons for project milestones, contacts, clocks and timetracking, charts, and communications.  A good variety that would work well business presentations, such as project updates or even with tutorials for project management software and processes.  The zipped files comes with all 18 images and the original Fireworks files in PNG format (which is Fireworks native format).  The the original files in there, the licensing is a basic “have at it” mentality.  You can use them for personal or commercial projects, and you can edit the originals.

Available at Smashing Magazine

If you like these icons and would like to find more in my collection, then feel free to browse my bookmarks at Jumptags.com.  I also encourage you to stay tuned for more icons I love and where to get them.  Also, if you haven’t already, consider signing up for my RSS feed or email updates in the links on the side.

Icons I love. Fur and feathers.

I told you I would share some icon sets that I really love.  As a quick reminder, I only do free.  So all of these are free downloads.  Today, we’re starting with animals.  Lots of fur and feathers.  Here’s a few sets that I think are super well done and are super easy to use.  These will work in Word, Powerpoint, or on the Web.  Two of these come with the original files, so you can edit them into what you need.  Go on and download.  Nobody’s watching.

Cute Critters

These adorable animals are “painfully cute” as described on the release.  A little heavy on the anime, all of these guys have caricatured features.  So something’s a little larger than everything else.  They are indeed cute, and they well done.  The set comes with two versions of each critter—one with the graduated single color background and one with a transparent background. They can be used in commercial and personal project without attribution, but that’s just not nice.  So go ahead and tell everybody where you got them from.

Available from Tutorial9.com

Birds 1

These cute little birds are one set of friends that could be used with Twitter or stand alone.  They are really friendly and round, so they would be great with K-12 kids, teachers, or even with newsletters.  There are a total of 8 images, even though only 5 are in the image at the right.  With these icons, you’re going to get the vector Illustrator (.ai) file for editing, along with EPS files.  So, these certainly have the potential to be used with print materials.  You also get the PNG files in three sizes (128, 256, & 512).  So they could be used as dominate images on slides or a web page.

Available from Mirkku

Birds 2

I used a screen capture of these Twitter birds in my last post on icons.  But I thought I would go ahead and given you a heads up on the full set.  There are 5 different birds with this set, and they each have fun names, like Roger, Nola, and Squidge.  For each character, you’re going to get your money’s worth, though.  You’ll get a Twitter badge, like the one to the right  You’ll get icons (PNGs) at a couple of different sizes.  You’ll be getting larger images, just silhouettes, and Photoshop (.psd) files for each character.  There’s 40 images in all.  So, this is well worth the download.  Because these birds are all whimsical, these are fun to use with less-than-serious topics, and they have really nice unity among the images to be used across design project.  The colors are a little muted, and there is a range of different colors.  So, lots of possibilities and play in the color schemes that could be used.  Plus, the licensing on these is pretty wide open, too.  A link back is appreciated but not required.

Available from Function Web Design

That’s it for today.  Three fun, cute, and furry or feather sets of icons for you to download and put to good —or no good— use.  Do you have some icons that you like?  Let me know what you like and where to get ‘em down in the comments.

Icon sets. I have just 4 words for you: Fab-u-lous and free.

Okay that’s 5 words.  Technically, 3.  But, I love collecting icons, and most of the time they come in sets.  I probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 50 sets of icons that have anywhere from 4 to 60 icons a piece.  So a rough estimate is somewhere around 800 to 1,000 icons. Admittedly, many of these are the same icon in 3 or 4 different sizes, such as 28 x 28 pixels up to 256 x 256 pixels.  I have bookmarked almost all of them, so check them out.

So what do I do with all of them?  Well, I’ve started using them a lot in presentations.  As I’ve moved to more Presentations 2.0 and emphasizing visual literacy for memory, I’ve begun to use a lot more images — in particular, Flickr Creative Commons and icons to demonstrate ideas.  I even created presentation for Clif Mims using almost all icons.  And since I create quite a few web sites and web pages for courses and professional development that I conduct, I tend to use the icons on these pages as well.

Here is a couple of examples of wiki pages where I used icons from Vistaicons.com and Pasquale D’Silva.  I find that often with a quick site, the icon sets work well because they are all in the same theme, or flavor, and they bring a visual unity to the site with both message and colors.  Plus, if you feel like you don’t have the graphic design know-how to produce quality images, then these high-quality images are a far better cry than screen beans in Office.

City icons on course website

Cute bird icons on course site

Three Tips for Icons

Free is better
I always look for free icons and icon sets.  Free is the new 99 cents.  Sites where I often receive notices about icons are SitePoint, Function, and Smashing Magazine.  I encourage you to subscribe to the RSS feeds/email alerts if for nothing other than the icon alerts.

PNG is where it’s at
I always look for PNG file format.  I’ve found that these have the most flexibility in use for digital presentations and online with web sites.  So the PNG files work with Word, Powerpoint, Dreamweaver, and in PBWorks, too.

Often when looking to download the icon sets they are especially designed for use with your operating systems.  So that you can change the icons for Firefox, Photoshop, and iTunes.  Therefore you will often see them in three flavors: Windows, Mac, and Linux.  Almost always the Linux pack is the PNG pack to download.  You can, of course, download the others for your operating system, but to get the most liberal use of the graphics, don’t overlook the Linux link.

U gotta Readme
Finally, when I download, I always, always, always, look at the Readme file and/or the release statement.  Inside these files are the licensing requirements for using the graphics.  In many cases, the licensing/copyright statement requires that you provide a link back to the distributing site.  In many cases, the statement does not allow you to redistribute the graphics in any manner other than linking to the download page.  In about 50% of the cases, the statement does not allow you to use the graphics for commercial applications.  However, in probably close to 50% of the downloads, the designer has also packaged the Illustrator or Photoshop original files, so that you can alter the images to your liking.  This is the case with the super cute Twitter birds.  Pasquale D’Silva licensed them out for use and derivations at will.

In fact, here’s an example of where I used the original Photoshop (.psd) file to change the icon to suit a blog post I was writing about retweeting and reposting.  (Actually, I used Fireworks, and it all worked fine, too.)

If that’s not enough to get you going on icons, then over the next few posts, I’m going to share some of my favorite icons and icons sets.  So stay tuned, clear out some space on your hard drive, and get ready to “Save image as…”  But if you can wait, then go ahead and download them now.

Are you collecting graphics, icons, or other media?  Share them (and the links) below.  I’m always looking for new media to share.