Pros and Cons of Outsourcing
Published February 2nd, 2012 in Business - 1 Comment
Running a design business, either as a freelancer or a small agency, is a big challenge. Getting the most efficiency out of your time is essential, but it’s also very difficult for those who wear many different hats, like freelancers. One of the most common ways of dealing with this challenge for efficiency is to outsource work to others. It could be anything from design work, front-end development, back-end development, marketing, to anything else that needs to be done.
There are some very strong reasons for outsourcing, and likewise the are some equally strong reasons against outsourcing. In this article we’ll look at those pros and cons, which will hopefully prove to be helpful to those who are trying to decide on whether or not to outsource.
Pros of Outsourcing
1. Leverage Your Efforts
Whether you are a part-time freelancer, full-time freelancer, or you run a design agency, the business aspect of your work is just as critical to your success as is your ability to design and/or code. One of the principles that is key to growing a business is that you need to be able to leverage your time and efforts. As a one-man operation you will only be able to earn money for the services that you can provide to clients yourself. But by expanding your business, in this case through outsourcing, you can leverage your efforts and make money based on the work of other people as well.
This makes an assumption that one of your priorities is to maximize income and profits, which may not be the case with all designers. Some designers prefer working on every aspect of client projects rather than outsourcing or hiring employees, even if it means reduced potential for business growth.
15 Amazing Twitter Tools for Increased Productivity
Published February 1st, 2012 in Social Media - 2 Comments
Twitter provides designers (and other service providers) with the ability to communicate and network in a way that can be really productive for business. However, spending too much time or not having a specific purpose with social media can become a major drain on your time. There are plenty of tools and resources available that can help you to get more out of Twitter in less time. In this post we’ll profile 15 of those efficiency tools for Twitter users.
Connect with us on Twitter: @vandelaydesign.
HootSuite
HootSuite allows you to manage multiple social media profiles from one dashboard. It integrates with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and more. You can schedule tweets to be sent at a specific time in the future, monitor mentions, send and read direct messages, see how many people click on links in your tweets, and more. The features mentioned above are all available on the free plan. A premium plan is also available for $5.99 per month that ads features for teams and provides Google Analytics integration.
Design Inspiration: Blog Design Showcase
Published January 31st, 2012 in Galleries - 4 Comments
Creating a quality blog design can be a significant challenge, because the design should add to the usability of the blog and should not overpower the content. Browsing through examples of beautiful blog designs can provide inspiration that can be put to good use in your own design work. In this post we’re showcasing 25 outstanding blog designs from various designers for your inspiration.
20 of the Best jQuery Slideshow Plugins
Published January 30th, 2012 in Web Development - 4 Comments
jQuery sliders, slideshows, and galleries are extremely common on a variety of different types of websites. Portfolio sites, blogs, e-commerce sites, and about any type of site can make use of a jQuery slideshow. Fortunately, there are a number of great plugins already coded that make it easy to add a slideshow in a matter of minutes. Each one offers different features and has it’s own style. In this post we’ll showcase 20 jQuery plugins that you may want to use for adding a slideshow in your own projects.
Slides
Slides is a jQuery slideshow plugin built for simplicity.Features include captions, multiple slideshows, and more.
How to Create a Set of Highlighter Brushes for Illustrator
Published January 26th, 2012 in Design - 2 Comments
A few months ago at Vandelay Premier we recently released a set of highlighter brushes for Adobe Illustrator,and in this tutorial we’ll show how you can accomplish the same thing on your own. We’ll scan some lines made by a highlighter and that will give us a nice brush for using whenever highlighter or marker effects are needed.
Ultimate Roundup of Photoshop Custom Shapes
Published January 25th, 2012 in Design - 10 Comments
Photoshop presets like brushes and patterns get more attention, but custom shapes can be equally useful. Because custom shapes are vectors, they can be scaled to larger sizes with no decrease in quality.
In this post we’ll link to some of the best custom shapes sets that can be downloaded for free. As always when working with freebies, be sure to read the terms of use or license details to make sure that you are using it in accordance with the designer’s guidelines.
Showcase of Outstanding Portfolio Websites
Published January 24th, 2012 in Galleries - 5 Comments
Portfolio websites are a major marketing tool for most designers and design agencies. The portfolio site allows you to showcase your work, provide information about your services, and receive inquiries from those who are interested in your services. Portfolio sites are often examples of quality design work, as every designer wants to make a positive impression through the design and usability of the portfolio site.
In this post we’ll showcase 30 fresh examples of well-designed portfolio sites for your inspiration.
25 Amazing Nightscape Photographs
Published January 23rd, 2012 in Galleries - 3 Comments
The same scene captured in a photo at night will have a completely different feel than one taken during the day. Night photos can be intriguing and amazing, but the low levels of light make them a challenge to master.
In this post we’ll showcase 25 examples of beautiful nightscape photos taken by various photographers. To see any of them in a larger size simply click on the image to be directed to the source.
You may also be interested in Showcase of Night Photography.
Photo credit: Byrd Thanakiatkrai
7 Keys to Effective Blog Re-Designs
Published January 19th, 2012 in Design, Design Process - 7 Comments
Many blogs get re-designed every couple of years, if not more frequently. Re-designing a blog brings a number of challenges because more content is being added to the site all the time, new types of content may have been introduced since the last design, and the priorities and goals of blogs often change or evolve over time. This means that when re-designing a blog you’ll need to take some time before jumping into the design work in order to think about how to prioritize the right content, how to make it easy for visitors to find what they want, and how to use the design to make the blog more effective at achieving it’s purpose for the owner.
The success of a blog re-design is more heavily influenced by a proper planning process than it is by the design skills of the person creating it. A blog can get a fancy new design that looks great, but if it doesn’t help to make the site more user-friendly and it doesn’t do an effective job of achieving the blog’s purpose, the impressive look ultimately has very little impact.
In this article we’ll take a look at 7 keys to the blog re-design process. These are all things that should be considered at the time of the re-design in order to make the site more useful for visitors and more effective for its owners.
1. Same Design Style or New Approach?
Most of the time when a blog is re-designed it will maintain a similar style or look and feel, just with an updated approach. Brand development takes time, and if a blog has established a certain identity with its audience you will usually want to maintain that identity through the re-design process. However, there are some cases where the re-design presents the opportunity for the blog to go in a new direction. This includes color schemes, logos, and general design styles.
One of the first decisions that should be made is whether the blog should keep a similar style to the existing design, or if it should feature a new design style. Think about the blog’s current audience, how they view the blog and the brand, and if that still fits with the direction the blog is headed.
13 of the Best Hosted CMSs
Published January 18th, 2012 in Web Development - 13 Comments
Open-source content management systems like WordPress and Drupal get a lot of attention on design blogs, but they are not the only options when it comes to choosing a CMS. There are a number of hosted CMSs available that are popular with designers and their clients.
While the features vary form one hosted CMS to another, several of the primary benefits are common to all or most of them. Things like having the hosting included, the possibility for designing and developing sites very quickly, availability of pre-designed templates, and support tend to be listed among the benefits of choosing a hosted CMS.
Some hosted CMSs allow designers the opportunity for a private label, meaning that designers can brand the CMS as their own. In this case clients will see the designer’s branding rather than that of the company behind the CMS. In many of these cases the designer can also earn a commission on monthly hosting fees, which provides a nice stream of residual income for designers who use the CMS with a number of clients.
Here is a look at some of the best and most popular hosted content management systems.
