BlogmyQuery – BMQ

Any WooThemes fan will be familiar with their popular Gazette Edition theme, but for 2009 they wanted something that would push the Gazette Edition theme forward with a more modern, stylish and minimal design. They contacted us about the fantastic project and we gladly accepted.

As with most things, the more time you spend working at something the better you become at it. For me each time I work with WooThemes just gets better and better. There’s a real understanding on both sides which makes the projects they give me a real joy to work on. And at the same time it means we make something which not only keeps you guys happy, but gives all involved in making the theme a real sense of satisfaction.

Daily Edition is the latest result of this meeting of great minds. *

From the moment they emailed me about the project to seeing the teasers released and finally seeing the theme go live I’ve been buzzing about this latest theme. Although each project I work on is special to me, I just felt this latest design hit the nail on the head, so for me seeing the fantastic comments on the early preview release it was a huge relief to see that people took a shine to it.

As Adii from WooThemes said himself;

Breathing some new life into the incredible success of Gazette Edition we wanted another news/magazine based theme that was minimalistic enough to let your content speak, whilst customizable enough to brand however you like. We approached our friend Liam McKay as we thought this was just up his alley, and did he impress!

Theme Details

Taking my initial design, and working it into 19 individual styles – and then pumping all sorts of JQuery goodness into the theme, on top of the fantastic custom theme options and features WooThemes love to build into each theme, this latest one is classic Woo at it’s best.

As mentioned the Theme aims to build upon the success of the Gazette Edition theme, with a more modern approach and minimalistic feel, so it had to have the great things people loved from the Gazette Edition, but be different and fresh enough to be value for money.

The standard WooThemes options apply for buying with pricing starting at just $70. And with a very helpful and devoted team on hand to answer all of your questions and queries, quality and value for money come as standard.

Important: This week you can use the discount code WEFUNCTION for 25% off the Daily Edition Theme!

The Wallpaper

A big part of this theme which I’ve not really done before was the creation of a Wallpaper to accompany the theme and to support what the theme was all about. My approach was to go for a really soft brushed, collage effect of memorable news items from history.

It’s actually quite a textured piece with a lot of brushes in play with various overlays and subtle watercolor elements mixed with a lot of clouds, smoke, and some hints of grunge. The deeper you look at it the more you can see the work that has actually gone into it. The wallpaper is available in various sizes and is available on the theme details page.

Your Thoughts

As always I’d love to hear what you like (or dislike about the theme) so make sure to check out Daily Edition – Also please make sure to check out the Wallpaper and let me know what you think of that too. A lot of effort went into both and opinions are alwats welcome.

For this icon set we’ve focused on icons based around freelance and office work, this set contains everything from invoices & contracts, to noticeboards and project folders. For a full understanding of the variety of icons on offer make sure to check the full preview image.

Function Freelance & Work Icons Details

As always we want this set to be able to be used along side our other two icon sets [ 1. Function Premium Icons ] [ 2. Premium App Icons ] – So we’ve made them in a similar style, same dimensions and a similarly low price. The set is available for only $15 which includes all the icons featured below, just click the image or buy them direct.

Congratulations to our Previous Winners

In our last pack of Icons we gave away 10 sets free. We had some great comments & feedback and are happy to announce the winners, who have all been informed and have received their winning Icons.

Josh

Thomas from BrushKing

Matthew from UXBooth

Jaswinder from Jaswindervirdee

Angie Bowen from Arbent

Chad Mueller from Inspiredology

Michael Angrave from CreareDesign

Steve Robillard from Digger Design Labs

Tom

Grazz from Blogging CSS

Other Icon Sets Available

As mentioned we’ve made all of our icon sets in a similar style, meaning you can put them all together to build one large collection of various themed icons. So if you like what you see here make sure to check out the other sets that have been available for some time now.

We’ve put together this free set of unique twitter graphics. Simply drag and drop the various graphics, icons, badges and buttons into your work free of charge. There really is no limit to what you can do with this brilliant set, lovingly designed by Pasquale D’Silva

Follow us on Twitter

If you enjoy the free set make sure you follow us both on Twitter: Follow me (Liam) @liammckay or @darkmotion (Pasquale) on Twitter!

Preview of the Set

The set includes 40 Files in total, all in Transparent .png format. The buttons etc come with PSD files too so you can edit and re-size them as needed. The original characters come as a large High Res image which makes it very easy to scale down and use however you want. We’ve included many size variations for you, and everything from badges, to silhouette so hopefully it should be as easy as possible for you to use them.

Download the Set

The full set comes in a .zip containing all of the graphics, which we’ve nicely organized. If you are going to share the set make sure you do so my sharing the Post URL, so in other words don’t link directly to the file. If you are using the set for your design work a link back is not required, but always appreciated.

Download Full Set | 5.5 MB | .ZIP

Special Thanks to Pasquale

Pasquale D’Silva is the artist behind the twitter bird characters. I’ve worked with Pasquale to bring you many free characters in the past and each time he’s injected a lot of fun and charm into the designs. He’s a fantastic guy with a great humor and a raw talent for this sort of thing. So if you’re ever in need of some character design work be sure to get in touch:

Pasquale’s Blog
Darkmotion is the Blog he runs, very entertaining.

Pasquale’s Portfolio
Portfolio of selected works & animations.

Pasquale on Flickr
Flickr is where he keeps photos, sketches etc

Pasquale on Twitter
@darkmotion is his Twitter

To promote our new application icon set with 275 fantastic icons we’re giving away this free unique set of social media icons. The free Social media icons are available to everyone, and a nice little bonus for anyone buying the full set.

Preview of Function App Icon Set

As you can see from the image below, you get a beautiful free set of social media icons as a free bonus. The other images are available via graphic river at a very cheap price. Download details below the image.

Details & Download

The set is perfect for anyone building a website, online app, or an app of any kind. We’ve made them similar in style to our other sets so you can always use them along side any of the other sets.

Download Full Set

You can grab the full set for $20 from Graphic River right now.

Download Free Social Media Icons

When sharing these icons all we ask is for a simple link back, either a link in the footer, info page, or readme file. If you are using them in any websites/apps/projects a link back would be nice but isn’t necessary. Enjoy & Download the Free Set.

Subscribe & Win 1 of 20 free Copies

We’re giving away 20 free sets of this icon pack (as it’s so big we thought it would be fair to give a few more copies away) To be in for a chance of winning simply follow these Instructions:

1. Subscribe to RSS Feed
If you haven’t already subscribed to us subscribe now.

2. Promote this Page
Promote the premium icons, the free social media icons, or this giveaway. Or all! (You can do this by twitter, your blog, facebook or anything)

3. Give us Feedback
Only comments that mention that they have subscribed & give us their thoughts on the icons, or any ideas for some new icons are eligible to be selected for the competition.

*Eligible entrants will be chosen and given a number, a random number will be generated 10 times (via random.org) and those people will get an email about it.

Entries end on 1st of June 2009.

Our Other Icon Set

We have another icon set available on Graphic River, the Function Premium Icon Set is the best selling Icon Set on Graphic River, with a 5 star rating. We make all our sets so that they can be used together, effectively giving you one huge collection of Icons that you can mix & match to your needs. Enjoy these icons and make sure you take part in the give-away above too!

Danny Outlaw has given us an advanced preview of his re-designed Outlaw Design Blog. And I’ve got to say it looks fantastic, Danny talks us through the process & reasons behind it, and what we can expect from the new design, and in fact the new Blog, as his re-vamp goes further than just a fresh new look.

What I love About the New Design

Before we get Danny’s thoughts about the design and the inspiration behind it, I thought I’d talk you through some of the things that make this design stand out for me.

The Subtle Touches

Yeah a word I love to use, but this is a prime example of how subtle elements & details help build a feel of quality. Everything from the background illustrations, the bullet holes and the 1pixel highlights around boxes to the small little green bar on the hover state in the top navigation. It seems everything has been thought of.

Footer Area

A smashing example of a very useful and simple footer. We’ve got special attention to a new feature of the site, the podcast, as well as some relevant links & information, topped off with a very hand & easy to see search bar.

Overall solid feel

With everything in mind, and looking at the full design – it has a very solid and easy to use feel about it, something that not all blogs have. What I mean by this, is it’s a site that just feels right, and I can imagine feeling comfortable spending any amount of time on it. I’m Looking forward to seeing it go live (which I believe is on the 20th April)

The Preview

Click the image to see a full size preview of the design.

What inspired such a huge relaunch?

To put it simply, I always a bit unhappy with past versions of Outlaw Design Blog.  While the designs them self weren’t bad,  I just didnt feel they helped me contribute to the community as much as I wanted to.

I started Outlaw Design Blog because I wanted to share my skills, opinions, and thoughts on the business of design.  While a traditional blog helps do this, it is only one of the many tools out there for sharing such things.  Now that the web and its users are more accustom to finding information in a variety of formats, I decided it was time to raise the standards and start offering information in a variety of multimedia formats.

It is really this interest in multimedia sharing that really sparked the fire for the re-launch.

When Outlaw Design Blog was just a thought, the idea was to create a “super blog” that was a combination of Freelance Switch, PSD tuts, and Smashing Magazine.  I never really came close to create such a blog in the past, but this relaunch should change all that.

Rob Palmer Branded07.com who did all of the illustration and the better part of the design also inspired me a lot.  I love his site and work.  I have worked with him in the past and he is just amazing!  He went all out on this design for me and he deserves many thanks for that.

What cool features can we expect to see in the re-launch?

One feature that will play a large part of the new Outlaw Design Blog is one that I have already started playing with a bit and that is video.  I am planning on making video a part of as many posts as possible in the future.  Everyone learns in their own way; some people learn better by reading, other by hearing or seeing.  For this reason, I want to add video, text, and possibly audio for every post that can handle it.  After the relaunch, and as my video editing skills improve, the videos should become a little more professional looking and less like home videos.

Aside from regular videos for posts, I am working on doing a semi-regular video with David Leggett from Tutorial9 which should be awesome.

Another feature that I am really excited about is the Outlaw Design Podcast.  I am working with Andrew Lindstrom from the Well Medicated Blog to create a podcast with a few other panel members including David from Tutorial9.  The podcast will be monthly and cover a variety of topics the freelance creative should appreciate.

I have also been building up a collection of high quality stuff to give away.  You can expect to see everything from hi-res textures to premium WordPress themes.

I have been working on building up a collection of Photoshop Tutorials.  So you can expect to see anywhere from 2 to 4 Photoshop tutorials a month.

I am also working one finding some developers to work with to create some top notch web tutorials for designers.

This new design also has an entire section dedicated to review of products and software that creatives are interested in.  On these types of posts, readers will be able to read my review, write thier own, and read others review of the product.  There will also be a link to purchase the product, as well as compare prices on it.

Additional Screenshots

What Do You Think?

Does it look promising to you, does it sound like Danny has made a change for the better? Did you prefer it before? Whatever your thoughts we’d love to hear them. I personally am really looking forward to it, from the design side of things I can’t wait to see the site live, and from the content side of things Danny has put a lot of effort into improving what he has to offer his visitors, so I’m also excited about seeing and reading that!