Today’s freebie is a fully customizable, vector little pretty heart.

For those who like to make something special to their someone special, this is the way to go! Grab the free PSD now by clicking the button below really really hard and use my heart wherever you like!

Happy Valentine’s day everyone!

The background pattern is a modification of the “Hand-crafted Wood” pattern made by the amazing Matthew Skiles.

Today’s freebie is a Photoshop layer style. I got inspired by a fantastic shot by Waldek Graczyk and I wanted to reproduce something similar.

The fonts used in the preview are Mod Font and Permanent Marker.

Hope you guys like it! Comments are, as always, appreciated.

Let’s get straight to the point.

How to get a Dribbble invite and become a player:

1. Follow me on twitter (@matteodicapua);
2. Follow me on facebook (facebook.com/matteodicapua);
3. Comment this post with attached your best shot (400x300px) and link to your portfolio;
4. Tweet the following: “Win a Dribbble invite! Join here: http://bit.ly/veoSeQ #dribbble #invite #contest #giveaway @dribbble via @matteodicapua PLEASE RT”

No more requests, you’re good to go.

Good luck!!!

Don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS (or by mail) to get the latest news and freebies!

Well if you do, I have 3 of them. Seriously, just ask.

Some time ago I was celebrating for a received Dribbble invite after months and months of patient waiting. Maybe you’re waiting for a Forrst invite and I can make you happy. That’ll make me happy, in fact.

If you don’t know what Forrst is, according to the founder of the site:

Forrst is a community of passionate developers and designers focused on helping themselves and others get better at their craft, providing thoughtful critiques, and sharing their knowledge to build better applications and websites.

What you can do once you have an account is share a link, a snap, a snippet or a question and join an awesome community of professionals.

Getting an invite is simple:

1. Follow me on twitter;
2. Write a comment on this post with your twitter account so I can follow you, but quick!
3. When we’re connected on twitter you can send me a private message with the email adress you want to use on Forrst.

It’s surely not a new thing that Apple cares about design. As I wrote in another post (what’s behind iCloud’s logo), designers at Apple use quite often the golden ratio in the construction of logos and icons for their products.

For definition:

two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one.

Since this proportion is globally considered to be aesthetically pleasing, Apple designed their own logo (first used in 1976) using as a base the golden ratio.

Credits: Rainer Kohlberger (for the image “Apple’s logo construction”), Diego Monzon for the cover image.

It’s not that I have a special love for periodic tables, but in some particular topics as in SEO, which have numerous elements/parameters, I believe that they’re the best way for displaying things. As a designer I think that visual synthesis is the best way to remember and learn new stuff.

Today I want to show you the periodic table of the 106 elements which currently are in the HTML5 working draft plus two proposed elements (track and device) made by Josh Duck. All organized in a tidy categorized way which also offers a link to W3Schools and W3C Reference for each element so you can look them up in a second. Neat!

Some time ago I released a freebie called Follow Buttons.

Well, after I’ve been drafted as a player on Dribbble I started receiving very useful comments and feedback over there (just as I initially hoped). In particular a comment by Jared Tomeck made me realise that my Follow Buttons had something weird about the grey marks, so I modified them and here’s the update!

Download the font Novecento used in the resource and then download the free layered PSD! And don’t forget to follow me on Dribbble.

In Norvegia la raccolta differenziata e il riciclaggio dei rifiuti sono cose serie, molto serie, come la prova costume in Italia per capirci.

Oltre alla raccolta differenziata (che avviene in ogni casa) di plastica, carta e cartone, vetro e alluminio, materiali pericolosi e umido c’è anche una simpatica cosa che in norvegese si chiama pant, e che noi potremmo tradurre con vuoti a rendere.

Il vuoto a rendere non è cosa nuova e c’è anche in Italia

No. C’era, ma come tutte le cose che funzionano non può esistere in Italia. Appena se ne sono accorti l’hanno tolta subito.

Tra l’altro gli stati che attualmente la utilizzano sono Australia, Canada, Germania, Olanda, Nuova Zelanda, Danimarca, Svezia, Finlandia, Regno Unito e Stati Uniti, oltre la Norvegia.

Come funziona?

Foto 1

Quando vai al supermercato e compri bevande in bottiglia di plastica grande o piccola, o lattine paghi una quota in più alla cassa, dai 0,13 € ai 0,33 € per articolo, dipende dalla grandezza della bottiglia.

Una volta consumata la tua bevanda, non butti la bottiglia o lattina, ma le conservi e la prossima volta che vai al supermercato le porti con te. Ti troverai di fronte una macchinetta (vedi foto 1) dove inserirai le bottiglie e riceverai uno scontrino che puoi utilizzare per fare la spesa oppure ricevere subito contanti se vai alla cassa.

Quindi la spazzatura si vende.

No. Come ho detto ti restituiscono la piccola quota pagata in più all’acquisto, non come sostenuto in alcuni popolarissimi video circolati su facebook. I norvegesi sono responsabili, non scemi.

Che vantaggi comporta il vuoto a rendere?

I vantaggi, oltre ai chiari benefici sull’ambiente, sono molteplici:

• Con i vuoti a rendere si risparmia il 95% di energia per la produzione di nuove bottiglie e lattine;
• Il riciclaggio di bottiglie di plastica riduce l’uso di petrolio. 1 kg di plastica fa risparmiare 2 kg di petrolio;
• I vuoti a rendere mantengono bassi i prezzi delle bevande, perchè il l’elevato ritorno di contenitori è ricompensato da meno tasse ambientali.

Ok, ma quali vantaggi per me?

Vedere alcune cose vale più di mille dati, ti fa capire quanto stupido è il fatto di non usarle.

Vi racconto una storia: dei ragazzi erano in un parco a fare barbecue e bere in compagnia, il prato cominciava ad essere sporco (perchè non tutti pulivano prima di andarsene) a quel punto arrivano dei bisognosi che cominciano a pulire, a raccogliere lattine e a chiedere a ragazzi se potevano avere le loro bottiglie vuote. La spazzatura era vista come guadagno per loro, usato per comprare cibo, cibo guadagnato pulendo la loro città.

Come questo ho altri mille esempi visti per le strade della città. Allora, quando vedi queste cose, capisci il valore vero che un sistema dà ai rifiuti e al loro riciclaggio, capisci che un sistema è realmente intelligente, che un sistema funziona.

Finally, after almost a year, I got an invite to Dribbble.

If you don’t now what Dribbble is:

Dribbble is show and tell for creatives. Designers, developers and other creatives share shots—small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on.

Personally I see Dribbble as the greatest community a designer could ever dream to join and I’m so proud to be a part of it. I’m also looking forward to receive feedbacks on my works by all those great talented professionals who make Dribbble so awesome.

Last but not least, I have to thank Corey Kaine for drafting me.

Here‘s is my Dribbble profile, come over and follow my shots!

Today some colourful plastic buttons for you. Available in green and orange, but if you don’t like green and you don’t even like orange… well you can download the free PSD and easily change colors yourself my friend!

The Photoshop file includes the hover state of the buttons, which is a nice 1px “pressed” effect. Enjoy!