Today we are pleased to feature a set of 200 useful and beautiful foodie icons. This freebie was created by the team behind Freepik, and at the time of writing it’s the largest set of food icons available on the web in one pack.

The 200 Foodie Pack includes 200 customized icons available in PNGs (32×32px, 64×64px, 128×128px), as well as in AI, EPS and vector format. Perfect for any projects around gourmet, food, restaurant, gastronomy and the like. Enjoy!

Large preview

Download The Freebie!

You may freely use it for both your private and commercial projects without any restrictions, including software, online services, templates and themes.

• Download the foodie pack (zip, 3.94 Mb)

Behind The Design

Here are some insights from the design team:

“At Freepik we love to make freebies and to develop free icons sets for designers that make work easier. The pack was created to neutralize the growing demand for food icons.”

Many thanks to the creative minds behind Freepik! We really appreciate your efforts!

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© The Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

The Secret Handshake is a fabulous project, aimed at helping young designers (18–25) find their way into the industry.

You should always quantify the advice you take based on who’s giving it to you, and The Secret Handshake — set up by Bright Bright Great — offers advice from some hugely successful industry names, as well professionals who’ve looked through thousands of job applications.

The advice is filterable based on résumés, application processes and organizing your portfolio. There’s also a series of events, although to date these have mostly taken place in Bright Bright Great’s backyard of Chicago.

With advice like this, any would-be designer would be wise to spend some time browsing the site. And if you’re already established, why not try contributing some of your own experience? 

Do you disagree with any of this advice? What advice would you contribute? Let us know in the comments.

Beautiful Samantha Script Font – only $17!

Whatever we might think of Edward Snowden’s release of classified documents detailing the NSA’s snooping on America’s - well, everyone’s - communications, at least we all now know what’s going on.

Sure, most of us on the coding side of the screen already knew the deal. I haven’t found a programmer who was surprised by the news that our emails, text messages, and phone calls are being logged and stored. If anything, most of them are surprised that the general public seems so shocked. What were people thinking? That Google just gives us services like Gmail for free? We pay for this stuff - not with cash, but with our data.

None of our data may be so interesting in itself, but when it’s combined with everyone else’s it reveals a whole lot of information about us. Using factor analysis and other statistical techniques, big data can identify members of a population who might be about to purchase a new car, trying to have a baby, or even about to change political affiliations. No logic is required; the people and machines analyzing big data sets don’t care about why one set of data points might indicate some other data point; they only care that it does.

As long as corporations from Facebook to Twitter are collecting and using this data, why shouldn’t government get in on the act? Instead of looking for potential car buyers or new mothers, however, government is looking for potential terrorists. Or at least that’s what they say. In reality, the sample size of known terrorists is so small that it’s essentially impossible to draw statistical conclusions about their data. The only way to know what they’re saying is to listen to what they’re saying. Luckily (or terrifyingly, depending on your perspective) voice calls can be scanned for keywords as easily as a text document. The conversation can then be parsed by humans to determine whether there’s a threat.

The big news here, if any, is that now this stuff is public knowledge. Most of my friends and colleagues knew about government surveillance of digital communications, already. Some former students had even told me about installing switches at cell phone companies to be used for government snooping. Others helped write the database architecture for facilities that store voicemail long after it has been “deleted” by its recipients. Most of them were relieved that the information they were afraid to leak themselves is finally out.

But they aren’t the only ones who had foreknowledge of this recent leak. Pretty much anybody who knows how code works was prepared for this sort of revelation. Because becoming code fluent is about more than simply knowing enough javascript to get a job. It’s a way to become familiar with the operating system on which the human drama is playing itself out.

Moreover, the better you understand the programs and platforms you use - and the permanence of almost everything you do online - the better equipped you will be to choose what the data watchers know about you, and what they don’t.

May the digitally illiterate proceed at their own risk. Once again, you have been warned.

This is part one in a two-part series on Projects Gone Bad. Next week we’ll look at how to avoid this problem and keep projects running smoothly. This week, we’ll look at what do when projects have already taken a turn for the worst.

We’ve all been there. What started out as a great project ends up souring. Maybe it’s your fault, maybe it’s your client’s fault. Whatever the reason, you find yourself with a client who is unhappy and no longer has faith in you.

Just in case you think this is uncommon, it’s not. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. If you are a freelancer or an entrepreneur, you need to prepare for those times when projects don’t go as planned.

Maybe your in that place right now. You have a project that has gone bad, your client is unhappy and the trust between you is damaged. What now?

Be Honest

It may seem like obvious advice, but you would be surprised at how tempting is to shift the blame. Self-preservation is a strong motivator and before we know it, we’ve rationalized a million reasons why it’s not our fault, why we’re not to blame and how we can weasel our way out of the problem.

But no one likes to hear excuses or finger-pointing. In fact, this will only cause more alienation and loss of trust. Honesty is the single best way to salvage a project gone bad. Be honest about what has gone wrong and take responsibility for it.

Have a Solution

Unless you want your client to panic, don’t just state the problem and leave them to figure it out. After being honest and taking responsibility, offer a solution. Or better yet, offer several solutions. Be creative and think of ways to turn a problem into an opportunity. If you don’t have a solution yet, you at least need to have ideas for the next steps involved in reaching a resolution. Clients will respect this more than you know.

Put Your Client’s Needs Above Your Own

Be willing to do what it takes to make the problem right, even if it’s not your fault. I once had a project go bad because I failed to set the right expectations. The client kept adding more and more work to the scope and, not wanting to disappoint them, I agreed to it all without extending our timeline. Needless to say, I soon found myself in a position where I was over-committed and unable complete the work.

Even though the project was more than 80 percent complete, I chose to take a drastic cut in my payment and help them find someone who could complete the project. Technically, I could have fought for 80 percent of my fee, but instead I chose to put their needs ahead of my own. A lot of trust was built in that moment and, to this day, that client still comes back to me for additional projects.

Conclusion

Be honest, have a solution and put your client’s needs above your own. We’ve all been on the receiving end of bad customer experiences. Think about a time when this happened to you. What did the person or business do that made you feel worse or made you feel valued? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

The post Projects Gone Bad Part 1: What Now? appeared first on Treehouse Blog.