There can be no denying the power of a restrained, minimalistic logo. Monochromatic color schemes and single shade branding is a sure fire way to add a touch of class, elegance and iconoclasm to your brand.

However the same can be true of vibrant, colorful logos. It’s much harder to execute successfully. But with a keen eye for taste, balance and harmony, a colorful logo can be every bit as refined as a simple black on white treatment. What’s more, using a zingy color palette can introduce a dynamism and energy that a limited color palette could never achieve. Here we take a look at ten stunning examples and explore the ways they succeed in building strong branding for their owners.

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Criticism is a fact of life when you work as a freelancer. Still, when you work hard on something, whether it’s a design, an article or a piece of art, you become attached to the work. You feel you have done your best, and it can be hard to accept criticism of that work. If you follow these steps, though, you should be able to accept criticism with the grace and good attitude that will lead to repeat business and recommendations.

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Icon design is one of the most important skills a designer can have, because the principles used in icon design overlap so significantly with other fields such as user interface design, web design and logo design. Designing a good icon can be a lot more challenging than it seems, because the small size makes it hard to integrate the desired detail, but a certain amount of detail must be present in order for the icon to be convincing.

The best way to learn icon design is to practice and follow tutorials.  In the year 2012, there’s already been a lot of great new icon creation tutorials that you can follow, and they all show off some cutting edge techniques.

Here’s the best new icon creation tutorials so far in 2012.

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PSD files are a terrific resource for designers, because not only can they save you time on your projects, they can also teach you techniques and styles that you might not otherwise know. There are a lot of PSD files available on the web, ranging from icon sets to textures, layers, buttons and more.

In this post, you’ll find 70 free PSD files for web designers, web developers, and everyone else, that you can download and use in your designs. We’ve handpicked the absolute best PSD files on the web, so every resource you’ll find here is layered and organized with pixel-perfect details.

Download and enjoy!

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Today we are excited to release a new freebie resource. A free Slick UI Elements. We are releasing this free resource in a fully layered PSD file. This resource is offered exclusively on ahmadhania.com. Download, full preview and more information after the jump.

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