I’ve been working on an icon set off and on for a number of months—basically whenver I can find a few spare minutes here and there. I’ve finally completed the entire set, including 40 total icons, designed in a minimal, pictogram style. You may recognize some of these icons too! The set actually started as the collection that I specifically designed for the current version of this blog, and I’ve just been adding some extra icons as time went on.

The first ten are basically just simplified icons for some of the more popular social media and social voting sites, mostly design related. Again, you can see these icons in action by scrolling down to the bottom of this post.

For the rest of the icons, I actually reviewed a number of different websites and tried to compile a list of what would be some of the most useful types of icons, and used my findings to guide the design of the rest of the set. Here is a preview of all 40 icons.

Here's a preview of all 40 icons included in the set

The icons themselves are all vector-based, and designed in Illustrator CS4. They scale up and down well, and remain fully editable, in case you need to make slight (or even significant) changes. Also, they are designed as fully “cut out”, meaning that the various negative areas within the icons are actually transparent and not white. This should work fine in the majority of cases, but if you do need these areas to be filled with white, just drop a white shape behind the icons!

To download this set, just click on the image below!

Echo Minimal Icon Set (Downloaded 5180 times)

The set is completely free, and you can use it in both personal and commercial works. There are just a few simple restrictions, which are outlined in the release file included in the download, so please review that document before using the icons. Also, If you do any of them design, please consider shooting me an email. I always love to see my freebies hard at work, and I would really like to see what you’ve come up with.

Let me know your thoughts on this one! Do you like the icons? Would you like to see more icon freebies on here?

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So I’m back with yet another texture pack for you guys! Way back in July 0f 2009, only about a month after the Echo Enduring Blog actually launched, I released a Texture Pack 2, which contained five wood textures for you to download and use in your designs. Since then, I’ve been meaning to do a follow up with even more wood textures. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally done it, and brought you five more wood textures!

The previous pack consisted mostly of different wooden surfaces that I had come across when I was out on walks with my wife and daughter. As such, there was a certain weathered quality to the textures. This time, however, I focused my camera lens more on the polished, interior woods of floors and furniture. This gives the textures a much different feel.

Here are a couple samples:

a light coloured wood

medium coloured wood texture

There are another three awesome textures in the pack too, and all of them are saved as high resolution JPEGs with no compression, to help maximize overall quality. A couple of them are a bit more blurry than I would have liked, but they should still be useful at smaller resolutions. So go ahead and download the pack by clicking on the preview below. I’ll bet you can find some awesome uses for these textures!

Texture Pack 7 - More Wood (Downloaded 7751 times)

If you do decide to download and use these textures in some way, I’d love it if you shot me an email or quick tweet to let me know or to show me a sample of your work. I love seeing my freebies in action!

Anyhow, I have plans for a couple more freebies over the course of the year, so do keep an eye out! And feel free to leave your thoughts or comments below!

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Merry Christmas! I’ll be honest, I put this post together yesterday and won’t actually be doing much on the blog on Christmas. I’ll be spending time with my family and friends and just enjoying all the incredible blessings of the season. But I’m still planning on giving away another freebie today, to go along with the snow textures and WhatsThis? plugin from the past couple of days.

Since this is Christmas, I wanted to do something related to the season itself. Not that that really narrowed things down all that much, since there are all kinds of things that are associated with Christmas. Snow, bells, Santa, reindeer, mangers, stars, wise men, holly, mistletoe. The list goes on and on and on.

Finally, I decided I would create some seamless vector patterns based on the iconic candy cane! So here they are. This package contains 6 different variations on the basic striped candy cane pattern, in both AI and PNG formats. I started with the traditional red green and white, then created a few different variations.

Candy Cane Pattern (Downloaded 1189 times)

It’s a pretty simple looking pattern, but I have to say that it took me longer than you’d expect creating these patterns. Getting those stripes to line up was pretty tricky until I found this awesome little article over at BittBox, explaining how to use Illustrator’s blend tool to create a striped pattern. As long as you have proper alignment, the technique works like a charm!

Anyhow, I hope that you enjoy these patterns and can find a use for them, either this holiday, next Christmas or any time in between (changing the colours can make them much more non-candy-cane-ish).

Even more importantly, have a very blessed and merry day, wherever in the world you are!

Let me know your thoughts on this one! Do you like the pattern? Would you like to see more pattern freebies on here?

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Today, we’re continuting with my series of freebies to celebrate the Christmas season. Yesterday, I posted a set of snow textures, which have already been download a bunch of times. Today, we have some jQuery goodness, in the form a small-but-useful plugin.

So recently, I’ve been working on the development of a new application called Survd, which I’ll be posting about in much greater detail at some point next week. A large portion of the development uses the jQuery framework and I wrote a number of custom methods to introduce different bits of functionality that I needed.

One of my favorites is a little method I call WhatsThis?

Basically, the plugin is designed to add a simple information button beside a targeted element. When a user hovers over the button with their mouse, a simple tooltip pops up, providing more information about the element. It’s a great little technique for adding basic, inline help to a site or web application, so go ahead and grab it.

WhatsThis? jQuery Plugin (Downloaded 687 times)

One important thing to note is that this plugin relies on the jQuery Tooltip plugin in order to function. If you are using or want to use a different tooltip plugin, it should be possible to modify the code to make it work.

The download package contains a full version of the .js file, along the jQuery library, the jQuery Tooltip plugin, and a demo page which explains the various options that can be used to configure each initialization of the plugin’s functionality. If you want to check out the demo page without actually downloading the entire package, I’ve also uploaded it here.

View the demo

So far, I’ve tested the plugin in recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and even Internet Explorer 8. It uses basic jQuery methods, so any browser that supports jQuery should be able to handle this one.

As with the Contained Sticky Scroll jQuery Plugin, if you have any questions or issues with the plugin, feel free to leave a comment. That being said, if the plugin becomes successful in the future, I may carve open a separate forum or something to deal with support requests.

Anyhow, go ahead and download the plugin. Have fun with it. If you do end up using it, I’d love to see it in action or hear your thoughts on it.

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In the Spirit of the holidays and Christmas season—one of my very favorite times of the year, I’m going to be giving away a few different design freebies over the next few days. I have some textures, icons, patterns and even a bit of jQuery goodness that I’ve whipped up (some cool stuff). All told, it should make for a pretty wicked collection of resources.

To kick it all of, I journeyed out into the blustry cold of winter in Ontario and put together Texture Pack 5, containing 7 high quality photographic textures of the snow around my house. It may not seem like much, but in the past I’ve had a few occassions where I needed a snow texture – usually in the summer or fall when the stuff isn’t readily available in mounds and drifts everywhere you turn!

Well, now you don’t need to go hunting. They’re right here, so let it snow in your designs!

Texture Pack 5 - Let It Snow (Downloaded 5095 times)

In terms of the textures themselves, I tried to include a bit of variety. There are a couple top view shots of plain, flat snow, along with a number of angled shots where you can see more mounds and undulations, and even a few little imperfections. All in all, I think that the variations make for a pretty useful and versatile pack.

Or, at least as versatile as snow textures can be!

Anyhow, I hope you find some awesome uses for these textures. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out. If you use them, please do let me know. I always love to see my work in action.

Also, don’t forget to stay tuned for more free stuff over the next few days. It’s going to be good.

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If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed something a wee bit different in terms of how the advertising is working here. After talking to the guys at AdPacks.com, who take care of all my advertising sales, I elected to try to improve advertising performance a bit by having the ad box “stick” to the top of the screen as you scroll down. It helps keep the ad in the window and increase overall visibility.

Now I know that not everyone will be a fan of that kind of thing, so I’ve tried to strike a bit of a compromise. You may also notice a simple circumflex (^) to the right of the ad space. If, at any time, you want to un-stick the ad box, just click that and the whole thing will go floating back up to its default position.

I like this solution because it helps me bring greater benefit to the awesome advertisers who help support this site, but also offers choice to the user.

So what does all this have to do with a freebie? Well, after searching the web for a while, I couldn’t really find a jQuery plugin that would really do what I wanted. You see, I wanted to make the ad box sticky, but I also only wanted it to scroll within the limits of its parent element. The sidebar is specifically designed to exist in the main content area, and I certainly didn’t want it floating down over the comment and footer sections. I’ve seen this done before, so I’m sure there’s something out there, but I couldn’t find it.

So I wrote my own, which is now finished and working (or should be working). I’ve decided to release it as a freebie here too.

Freebie: Contained Sticky Scroll jQuery Plugin (Downloaded 5580 times)

The download package contains both full and minified versions of the .js file, along with a demo page which explains the various options that can be used to configure each initialization of the plugin’s functionality. If you want to check out the demo page without actually downloading the entire package, I’ve also uploaded it here.

View the demo

So far, I’ve tested the plugin in recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and even Internet Explorer 8. It uses basic jQuery methods, so any browser that supports jQuery should be able to handle this one.

This is my first jQuery plugin, and I’m not really sure what to expect in terms of reception. For now, if you have any questions or issues with the plugin, feel free to leave a comment. That being said, if the plugin becomes successful in the future, I may carve open a separate forum or something to deal with support requests.

Anyhow, go ahead and download the plugin. Have fun with it. If you do end up using it, I’d love to see it in action or hear your thoughts on it.

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It has been far, far too long since I actually released a freebie here on the Echo Enduring Blog. So, today I’m going to rectify that situation, by bringing you my third set of free vector patterns – Tribal Fire – to go along with Imperial Leaf and Abstract Blobs.

This pattern emerged out of a session of experimentation. It had been a while since I created this kind of intricate vector pattern, and I wanted to keep my skill sharpened in that area. So, I just sat down with Illustrator and my Wacom tablet and started to play around with different curves and shapes. The results of this experimentation are the Tribal Fire pattern!

Tribal Fire Pattern (Downloaded 1034 times)

Anyhow, you can download these patterns by clicking on the preview image above. The download will include the original black pattern along with three colourd variants – “Sunset Flame”, “Undergrowth” and “Morning Frost”. There are also PNG versions of these. Feel free to come up with your own custom colour combos though.

If you do use it in a design, please consider shooting me an email. I always love to see my freebies hard at work, and I would really like to see what you’ve come up with.

Let me know your thoughts on this one! Do you like the pattern? Would you like to see more pattern freebies on here?

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Today I am bringing you another awesome freebie. I haven’t given away a vector freebie in a while, so I figure it’s about time to release another one for you all. Wouldn’t you agree?

The vector that I am releasing today is actually something that I designed for a tutorial that I recently had published over on SpyreStudios. It is a glossy heraldry vector with a Valentine’s Day theme. Yes, I know I’m a few days late, but I prefer to think of it as being a few months early. Besides, the tutorial itself was actually released on Valentine’s Day, and I wanted it to hit the “airwaves” before I released this freebie!

Anyhow, you can just click on the preview below to download the vector.

Heart of the Unicorn (Downloaded 844 times)

Obviously, this vector was inspired by my love of heraldry design, but with a bit of a twist. Instead of using the classical shield as the center point of the image, I elected to go with a heart instead. Then, because the heart kind of lead into a romantic theme, I decided to add in a couple of unicorns too, since the unicorn is often associated with young maids and such.

You are free to use this vector in your own designs – commercial or otherwise. All I ever ask is for you to send me a quick note letting me know how and where you used it. A sample of your design or a link back here would be greatly appreciated, too!

Oh, and both the wings and the unicorns were also hand drawn and then vectorized in Illustrator, so this is definitely a hand crafted vector. Also, all of the elements – heart, wings, unicorns, banner and star-burst or broken out onto separate layers. Feel free to extract any of them and is it on its own.

If you enjoy this vector, please let me know by dropping a comment or promoting this post on your favorite social media site! Keep an eye out for more awesome freebies coming your way in the future!

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It’s time for another freebie from the Echo Enduring Blog. Today I am bringing you my first ever Mega Texture Pack, featuring 25 high resolution textures for you to use in your designs. The mega pack contains five subsets of textures, each with a different theme. These themes include, grunge, fabrics, carpets, weathered woods and miscellaneous coloured textures.

This is an exclusive pack, which is made available to RSS subscribers of the Echo Enduring Blog. However, I am also releasing another pack called the Mega Texture Pack Sampler, which contains one texture from each subset in the larger pack. These textures are available for download to anyone. Just click on the following preview to grab them and get a taste for what’s in the larger pack!

Mega Texture Pack - Sampler (Downloaded 5079 times)

If you like them, be sure to come back and grab the mega pack too, and get yourself another 20 textures for free! Better yet, why not just grab it right away? Not convinced yet? Here are some more samples of the textures you will find the mega pack!

A Sample Grunge Texture from the Mega Pack

A Sample Fabric Texture from the Mega Pack

A Sample Coloured Texture from the Mega Pack

Accessing the pack is easy. Just check your feed reader for my most recent post, and look for freebie code at the bottom of the entry. Then, click the download link below, which will take you to the Mega Textures Pack download page. Enter the freebie code for immediate access to the entire mega texture pack.

If you’re not currently subscribing to my blog, it’s not too late! Just add my feed to your RSS reader of choice! Not only will you get access to this awesome pattern pack, you’ll also get all sorts of other awesome content delivered right to your reader!

» Grab the RSS Feed

» Download the Mega Texture Pack

If you enjoy these textures, please let me know by dropping a comment or promoting this post on your favorite social media site! And thanks for subscribing to my feed! Keep an eye out for more exclusive freebies coming your way in the future (like a full set of icons perhaps?).

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Hey guys. To help kick off the year, I am releasing my fourth freebie texture pack! This one contains five unique watercolour textures that I created myself. Now, I want to be up front with all my readers. These textures were originally created as part of a project that I am working on for a new site called MediaLoot (see below for more details on the site).

I was hired to create a set of 10 watercolour textures (along with some other resources). So I decided to create 15 – 10 to complete the project and 5 to give away as a freebie here on the Echo Enduring Blog. The guys at MediaLoot selected 10 of the textures. The remaining 5 are now available to you all as a free download.

Texture Pack 4 - Watercolours (Downloaded 11242 times)

Now, I want to stress that these textures are not rejects. They simply were not selected for one reason or another. I still put a lot of work into these, and they are scanned at a very high resolution. I actually like a couple of these better than some of the ones that were chosen! I’m sure they will prove valuable too you.

In previous posts for non-exclusive freebies released before today, I usually sent you to a specific section of my site. However, in anticipation of a redesign and reorganization coming down the pipe, I will now be releasing all of my freebies directly on the blog itself. I will also be updating the previous freebies to reflect this change.

So, to download Texture Pack 4, just click on the preview above.

I hope you find some awesome uses for these textures. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out. If you use them, please do let me know. I always love to see my work in action.

About MediaLoot

Okay, now more about this MediaLoot site. Basically, it is an awesome new resource base created by Jon Phillips and Mason Hipp. You can read their own descriptions of it over at SpyreStudios and Freelance Folder. Basically, though, MediaLoot is envisioned as being the ultimate designer’s toolbox.

MediaLoot

The site will be subscription based, and will allow users access to an entire collection of different design resources, all for one modest monthly fee. There will be textures, brushes, vectors and icons, just to name a few of the types of resources. If you haven’t checked it out yet, head on over. And while you’re there, don’t forget to sign up for the email updates. Thanks guys!

I’m looking forward to releasing more awesome freebies throughout 2010. Have an idea or something you’d like to see me tackle? This is your chance to speak up. Drop a comment and let me know what kind of freebies will rock your world this year. You never know, I just might take your suggestion.

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