It’s Freebie Friday time again folks! Here’s a new special edition brought to you by our friends from Launch Effect - a free WordPress theme that lets you create a viral landing page in minutes. We’re giving away 3 premium yearly plans! Scroll down to see how to grab the theme!

Here’s how Launch Effect works

• visitors to your website sign up using their email
• upon signing up, the page generates a special URL for them to share with their friends
• use the URL to track your most active referrers (right in the WP admin panel) and reward them for spreading the word
• they integrated with MailChimp already and Aweber will follow soon

Launch Effect Premium

Launch Effect Premium is the paid version of the theme that offers more control and new features to help you build a great-looking website that goes beyond a landing page. With its robust settings panel, Launch Effect Premium empowers web designers, marketers, and WordPress enthusiasts to build beautiful, fully featured websites without touching a single line of code. Here’s a quick rundown of its features:

• Fully-styled blog and theme capabilities (WP’s widgets & menu controls)
• Expanded design customization tool
• Slide-down viral sign-up tab
• Animated countdown clock and progress bar
• Brandable footer
• Premium priority support

Launch Effect Premium also offers the beloved features of the free version: MailChimp sign-up list integration, Typekit and Monotype web font integration, and a referral link generator with conversion tracker. Here are some demos showcasing the possibilities of Launch Effect Premium.

WIN a Launch Effect Premium License!

Win a single site Launch Effect Premium license with access to all future upgrades. You can check out upcoming features for LE Premium right here.

• tweet this: win 3 premium licenses to @LaunchEffect from @InspiredMag
• leave a comment telling us what you plan to launch using Launch Effect

We’ll randomly pick three winners and make the announcement here next week. Good luck!

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Win 3 Licenses for the Launch Effect Premium WordPress Theme

Check out the hottest web design goods curated by our pals at WebDesignGoodies - this time with a Valentine twist! Here’s a neat collection of recent freebies, themes, graphic elements and other goodies. Feel free to contribute in the comments as well!

All You Need Is Love Vintage Poster/Flyer Template (only $6)

100% original lettering composition (calligramme) made from the name of song, written by John Lennon. Our poster is mix of modern typography and retro 1969`s feel. Don’t you want somebody to love?! It will be useful for St. Valentines day vintage parties, as invitation for funky style wedding. Or it could be used as poster for Beatles tribute concert. Anyway, you can simply print it and put it on the wall of your room. Also, All You Need Is Love Poster Pack includes original vector EPS file, with lettering in 4 different color combination. So you can print valentine card, t-shirt or bag for yourself or friend, with our artwork to show your emotion to everyone.

Package include:
• Well grouped print ready PSD file with 4 different style posters (2625px x 3375px, 8.5”x11” with .25” bleeds, CMYK , 300 dpi )
• EPS file with 4 different style lettering compositions.
• Background of this poster is cool old paper texture, you can use it separately.

Valentines Landing Page (only $9)

This is a simple Valentines Landing Page. Perfect for, you guessed it, Valentines Day! However can be altered for anything else if you so choose to do so. Documentation and Easily Edit! Layered PSDs are included with this template.

3,000 High Quality Stock Vectors (only $47)

High quality stock vectors can save you tons of time in creating new projects, whether you use them as-is or as the jumping off point for your own designs. But those high quality vectors can be incredibly expensive. That’s where this awesome deal from Vectorain comes in. You’ll get 3,000 Royalty-Free vectors – a $2,700 value – at the unbeatable price of only $47! That’s an average cost of $1 for every 63 vectors. You’ll get all 3,000 vectors in EPS10 format, as well as JPG previews. Included are individual elements, complete designs, and more.

Game elements ($6)

Check out some addictive casino games elements and 3d icons of roulette chips, dices and playing cards of four aces. The pack consists in vector EPS illustration of casino elements hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades suits.

Grunge Heart (only $1)

Melt her heart woth this grunge style heart.

Valentine – Small business template (only $22)

Do you have small business and would like to have cool site? This is the best choice for you. Our template is easy to customize, fun to work with and looks great! And we have small bonus for you. Since valentine is here soon and people will be looking for presents, we have styled our template for this occasion! All changes need to be made are described in detailed documentation.

Hand Draw Valentine Icons – Free PSD Heart Icons

Valentine’s Day soon on this occasion today freebie is Hand Draw Valentine Heart Icons Set. In this free icon set is included 6 pre made valentines heart graphic and PNG Icons (32×32, 48×48, 64×64, 128×128). Zip file include 24 png icons and free PSD template.

 Tiffany Blue Valentine’s Day Icon Set (free)

 Sky WordPress Theme (only $39/free if you join)

Sky floats above the pack in style and its sense of whimsy is sure to leave your visitors surprised and refreshed. Sky is unique in the way it’s homepage operates, loading all of your content seamlessly using ajax. This means that no matter how many pages you have in the “slider,” your initial page load speed will be lightning fast as each page is only loaded when it is displayed.

 Fabulous WordPress eCommerce theme (only $75)

Sell your fashion, clothes, and many more apparel products of your business site fabulously with Fabulous. Big images of your featured and recent products, easy-to-find yet eye-catching shopping cart, and image slideshow, gives you more chances to get linked with your customers, besides (of course) its integration with your other social media’s accounts. Keep your customers focus on your products, and cover your site ‘Fabulous’ly.

Bonus: Type faster with TextExpander for Mac – only $17!

If you’re like a lot of people, there are likely a number of standard text snippets you use on a regular basis. TextExpander is the most popular Mac typing shortcut utility that saves you time and keystrokes. Just assign abbreviations to frequently-used snippets of text. Then, when you type the abbreviations they expand to the full text snippets. With this fantastic deal, you can get it for just $17! That’s half off the regular price of $34.95!

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Spread the Graphic Love with Valentine Design Goodies

Erin Emocling, aka basterda, is the editor-in-chief of the Lomography Magazine. She also writes Analogue Lifestyle pieces which are often inclined to classic, noir, and vintage memorabilia. Apart from spreading analogue love, Erin is also a marveller of cinematic films and non-sequitur literature. Check out more on the Best of the Best or any of her other series.

“I never wanted to be famous. I wasn’t as steady as a tripod.” – Brian Duffy

Features by Brian Duffy © via www.duffyphotographer.com

In 1979, Duffy left his photographic career of fame and fortune for a life of obscurity and restored Gregorian furniture instead. He abruptly burned the greater part of his collection of negatives and slides, quit his profession forever, and didn’t shoot another picture for nearly 3 decades. In 2009, however, his son, Chris, revived his legacy and curated the first exhibition of his father’s work. After less than a year, Duffy passed away due to a lung disease.

Here’s an intimate and touching documentary film as a tribute to Brian Duffy’s legacy to the world of photography, directed by Linda Brusasco and produced by Brian’s son, Chris Duffy.

THE MAN WHO SHOT THE SIXTIES from CHRIS DUFFY on Vimeo.

Which of these elegantly explosive Brian Duffy photographs strike your liking the most? What other fashion photographers from the ’60s and ’70s would you like to be written about?

Post brought to you by the Lomographic Society International: a globally active organization dedicated to experimental and creative snapshot photography. Boasting over a half-million members across the world, the concept of Lomography encompasses an interactive, vivid, blurred and crazy way of life.

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Best of the Best: Brian Duffy

Just a quick note: the folks at Rackspace created a pretty neat infographic to take customers through a simple decision making process on a route to the solution that’s right for them. Check it out and let us know what you think:

Infographic by Rackspace Hosting

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New Infographic: Hosting Decisions, From the Chalkboard

James Trezona, MD of Mason Zimbler suggests that if you’re looking to create awesome ideas in 2012, you should borrow some lessons from Leonardo Da Vinci.

The Ideas Economy is going to be more important than ever in 2012. We all need ideas to make better products, to tell better stories, to stand out from the crowd. At Mason Zimbler we rely on the generation of fresh ideas to communicate a client’s products, brands and business.

So how can you create even better ideas in 2012? You could start by mixing two essential ingredients: art and science. Art provides: ideas that wow, genius creative treatments, smart innovations, great stories, words and pictures. The Science gives the critical data, metrics and analytics. In our industry the art creates the message that will engage with the audience; the science provides tools to track, measure and evaluate campaign effectiveness.

Mixing Art and Science is not so new; Leonardo Da Vinci was an early advocate. Da Vinci was designer, innovator, architect and technician: his technical drawings on the possibility of human flight still form the basis of helicopter design today. He considered himself primarily an artist; yet all his work was underpinned by scientific knowledge, and this knowledge formed the very essence of his concept of the world. He could communicate his technical and scientific know-how clearly through his art.

Our brain has two distinct hemispheres for processing information – the left brain for verbal and rational ability, the right side non-verbal and intuitive; Da Vinci’s genius was a result of his talent in using elements from both to enhance the overall picture. Blending art and science is about collaborating in ideas generation: the inter-relationship is critical, you can’t have one thing without the other. A bunch of code or data is just a bunch of numbers without the art.

In 2012 those who can bridge art and science will be powerful – the interesting ideas lie at that intersection. So if your ideas are going to change hearts and minds, try blending them together.

Here are five simple tips to get you started:

• Use art to make the user-experience elegant.

• Use art to communicate your idea – give it some emotion: that’s what will engage with your audience.

• Use science to prototype, to experiment and test your ideas.

• Use science to gather data about your audience, to know what makes them tick.

• Remember, instinct still rules. Do not replace human decision making with an algorithm!

If you’re interested in finding out more, check out James’ free manifesto: Blending Art & Science To Create More Effective Ideas.

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The Art & Science Mash-Up

Zero Bundle is an awesome set of resources, filled with free design goodies, icons, textures, UI kits, graphic elements and much more! You’ll want to get your hands on this one soon as it will only be available for a very short time!

What you get:

Larsson Patrik
A power pack of premium quality freebies that contains 12 premium elements (one of them is a Zero Bundle exclusive). Pack includes: Patricons v.1, PatriGlyps Set 1, buttons, login form, wood panel box, social buttons and more. For more freebies visit the authors’ website below and subscribe to his site for more exclusive freebies.

Ben Bate
The pack includes a variety of user interface elements, ranging from sleek navigation bars and login forms to site designs and icons. Included are a full Apple like menu, iPad icon, login form, and menu with notifications. Ben is a freelance designer from Plymouth, England who specialises in Graphic, UI and Web Design.

Purty Pixels
Here’s a set of PurtyPixels freebies that are crafted with oodles of fun and buckets of joy. There’s a bit of buttons (some of which are quite crazy), some author pro-esque buttons, a full fledged UI kit from the dark side and a fantastically super set of badges. PurtyPixels is a super awesome, fantastically free collection of PSD design resources designed by Richard Tabor.

+ tons of other digital goods from top notch graphic designers! Check it out and grab your free copy now!

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Meet Zero Bundle: The Only FREE Bundle Out There

The hottest web design deals curated by our pals at WebDesignGoodies are back for good! Check out a fantastic collection of recent freebies, themes, graphic elements and other goodies. Feel free to comment and contribute if you seen any deals lately!

Siri Freebie | Free

The beautiful Siri alarm. Feel free to download the .psd file and play with it.

Smashing Mag Bundle | Value $31.80 | New Price $19

Have you ever wanted to design your own ebooks? Wanted to master CSS? Or maybe improve your workflow and manage your business better? If you answered yes to any of these, then have we got the bundle for you! And the best part? It’s filled with high quality resources from Smashing Magazine.

Psd Water Drops Background Texture | Free

A collection of small, medium and big psd water drops that can be used to create any water drop background and apply a water drop texture to your design. Each water drop graphic is vector shaped to allow for any use from print to web.

6 ThemeShift WordPress Themes for only $59 | Value $330 | New Price $ 59

With lots of WordPress themes out there it is hard to choose but if you want to customize look no further because few themes are as incredibly well-coded as ThemeShift Word Press themes. The clean, well-structured and commented code makes it super easy to add your own stamp to your themes.

Simple Facebook button | Free

A crispy Facebook button for you to use in your projects. Normal and a pressed state included. Fully layered PSD file containing resizable vector shapes. Enjoy and remember to share with fellow designers!

Over 1,500 Professional Photoshop Text Effects| Value $39 | New Price $19

Have you ever wanted to create amazing text effects in Photoshop? With John Forsythe’s Photoshop Text Effects collection, you’ll be able to create those amazing effects in just seconds without any prior experience! Create gold and silver text in seconds. Rusted metal, chrome, and steel are all just a click away.

Notepad | Free

Great little freebie that might come in handy when needing a notepad / paper pack on your graphic projects.

Professional iOS App Design Templates | Value $280 | New Price $47

The iOS App Store Top 10 list… the one list many developers would consider selling their firstborn child to be on. It’s a magical place, one that offers fame, fortune, and potentially hundreds of thousands of downloads. But the apps that have made the list don’t have super powers.

A Compact Music Player Design | Free

Today’s freebie is a minimal compact music player design, Ideal if you’re building a new application or anything that needs a music player, a widget maybe? As usual the PSD is layered and grouped and ready to go.

Save the Pixel eBook | Value $27 | Price $13

Wouldn’t you like to know the secrets to layout, design, and copywriting that no one ever told you about? You know, the ones that actually work? Save the Pixel, the best-selling eBook guide to crafting effective web pages, does all that and more! Now in its second edition, Save the Pixel includes 188 pages of info and examples to show you exactly how to transform your web sites today.

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10 Must Have Freebies & Deals for Creative Professionals

The iOS App Store Top 10 list… the one list many developers would consider selling their firstborn child to be on. It’s a magical place, one that offers fame, fortune, and potentially hundreds of thousands of downloads. But the apps that have made the list don’t have super powers. They’re just regular apps, with one little exception: DESIGN! You can’t make the top ten list without awesome design.

And that’s where this phenomenal bundle from App Design Vault comes in! Included here are four iPhone App designs that are completely customizable. All for only $47, an 83% savings over the normal price of $280!

Each theme is professionally designed and it includes over 20 design elements, all sliced up .PNG files ready to go into your app design. There’s a sample Xcode project that shows you how to use your theme so you can be up and running in seconds. PSD files are also included for more flexibility.

Here are some details on what you get with each theme:

Social Boo
Created specifically for Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare apps. It comes with four screens: a list of social updates, a user profile, a splash screen, and an icon. It also includes design elements like buttons, progress bars, etc. View template

Pricing:

Get ALL 4 of these app templates today for just $47 instead of $280! Save over 83% off the retail price!

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Professional iOS App Design Templates Bundle – Only $47 Instead of $280!

In December we teamed up with our old friends from UPrinting to give away 750 business cards to 3 lucky Inspired Mag readers. Scroll down to see if you won or you should stay tuned for the next freebie Friday edition (starting tomo).

What we gave away

• 3 sets of 250 die cut Business Cards

• Glossy, UV, Matte or Uncoated Paper

• Tastefully Thick 14pt Cardstock

• Rounded Corner, Circular or Leaf Shapes

Who won

• Monique

• Jeff Drumgo

• Jash Sayani

Congrats guys – someone from UPrinting will contact you very soon to hand you the prizes! And thanks everyone for entering the giveaway! We have a special edition of our Freebie Friday series tomorrow so Stay Tuned!

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WINNERS: 3 Packs of 250 Die Cut Business Cards from UPrinting

A while back our team launched the Boosted platform, a series of fun social media-focused games on behalf of Samsung and Intel. The first was Tweetwrap, which is fairly self explanatory, the second, Tweetcracker, allowed you to discover clues to a secret combination and eventually crack a real safe with a laser.

The encore took a bit longer to come up with.

After a slew of ideas relating to the speed of the Series 7 notebook computer, our clients asked us to pull back and focus on ideas relating to clue-based gaming that made Tweetcracker so successful.

The idea for Secret Sites came during one of those obnoxiously cliche moments when people claim inspiration strikes – neither my partner Anthony Dines nor I remember which one of us actually came up with the final idea, and it happened after we felt like we had exhausted concepts for the day.

We had talked about stashing Series 7’s around the United States using its web cam to give visual clues of its location. It was complex, out of budget, and didn’t feel creative enough to be called Boosted, but the nugget of the idea was there – a clue-based scavenger hunt.

We were talking about hiding clues on funny websites around the Internet when one of us said “How about hiding the websites themselves?” Then we wrote the puzzle on a piece of paper: www._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _  _.com. We had our idea, and added the incentive that the fastest person to find a site could win a Series 7.

Our social media team helped us focus our executions to single-serving sites, the “knock-knock jokes” of the Internet. We had a few sites in mind like www.TheHillsRaliveWiththeSoundofMusak.com but wanted to open the forum to all Barbarians on an internal email thread. Rye, our senior strategist from the Austin office, thought of ScratchandSniffWebsite.com.  And ladyzombo.com pays homage to the godfather of single serving sites, zombo.com. We moved on with whatever made us laugh the most, and wrote the remainder. One of our favorites, clientdreamwebsite.com was a bit of an inside joke about the push/pull between clients and their agencies (make the logo bigger! more product!) with a slightly hidden long scroll dialogue.

Every site is branded with contextually relevant ads, all driving to the Series 7 product page. There’s branding, but it is fun, and in the context of something people actually get a kick out of.

Each Boosted campaign is not just an exercise in growing a fan base from scratch; it’s a study in how to communicate a particularly influential, but jaded, type of audience. We couldn’t have made it without TBG’s love of weird Internet culture that attracts the notoriously finicky techie target. For Samsung and Intel, Boosted is turning into something more than an experimental side project and informing what it means to earn attention through cool experiences rather than stealing attention through a banner ad.

—

Oh hey, we’re The Barbarian Group. We’re a digital-centric creative agency. Which means we think the Internet has finally won, and become the most important channel in people’s lives–just like we always knew it would. So from brand planning, to attention-grabbing ideas, to innovative applications, products and platforms, we combine strategy, technology, creative and media to make everything brands need to navigate this awesome new world.

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