Showcase of Annual Report Design
Published February 13th, 2012 in Galleries - 4 Comments
Annual reports are important for presenting information to a company’s investors, so having an annual report that looks professional and presents a good image can certainly help the cause. The design of the report is, of course, secondary to the content, but still important.
In this post we’ll showcase some examples of annual report design for your own inspiration. These samples come from the Behance Network, and in most cases you can see more images from each annual report by clicking on the image and following the link to Behance.
Getting More Out of Your Blog Archives
Published February 9th, 2012 in Blogging - 1 Comment
Bloggers typically dedicate a lot of thought and effort into topics that should be covered with their upcoming posts, and rightfully so, but older posts are often quickly forgotten both by the blogger and by readers. As a blog continues to publish new content the archives will grow larger and larger, and for many blogs the archives include a wealth of information and content that is not being maximized.
For most blogs, posts from the archives can continue to be useful for years to come (of course, this depends on the specific content of the post) if they are actually seen by visitors. The archives can be helpful for a number of different purposes, including attracting new subscribers, building a newsletter list, selling products, promoting your own services, promoting affiliate products, selling advertising, and more.
If your blog has been around for a while, chances are you have archives that could be doing more for you, and helping more readers at the same time. If you’re looking to get more out of your archives there are two things that you need to know first:
1. What posts from the archives are already attracting visitors? You probably have some specific posts that attract search engine traffic on a consistent basis, or maybe a popular website or blog linked to one of your posts and it results in a consistent flow of referral traffic.
2. What posts from your archives would you like to get more exposure? Maybe these are you best quality posts that would showcase your expertise, or maybe they would be good for promoting a related product or service.
Tips for Improving Posts That Already Attract Visitors
So you’ve done some analytics research and you know that a few of your posts attract a decent number of pageviews each month without any effort from you. Most likely they get a steady flow of traffic from search engines, but it could be other sources as well. The typical situation is that you probably created a quality blog post, it attracted some links, you haven’t paid any attention to it since then, but it still gets a steady flow of traffic. The traffic is great, but it could be much more valuable to you if that traffic is converted into something specific. That “something specific” will depend on your blog, the subject and content of the particular post, and the approach you want to take with your blog.
Here are some tips for getting more out of these types of blog posts.
30 Unique Business Cards
Published February 7th, 2012 in Galleries - 11 Comments
Unique business cards can help you to stand out to potential clients. Being more memorable will often result in being more likely to get hired. Fortunately, there are all kinds of possibilities to create unique business cards. In this post we’ll showcase 30 examples for your own inspiration.
Comment to Win a Free Item of Your Choice from MightyDeals!
Published in Site News - 111 Comments
Our friends at MightyDeals have offered to give a free item to 5 lucky readers of the Vandelay Design blog!
25 Websites with Awesome Backgrounds
Published February 6th, 2012 in Galleries - 10 Comments
In recent years the use of large background photos and illustrations has become increasingly common in web design. In some cases the background image is the most distinct feature of the design.
There are all kinds of different backgrounds that can be used, like nature photos, nature illustrations, and abstract designs. In this post we’ll showcase 25 websites with impressive backgrounds that really make the sites stand out. If you’re looking to make a website or a design memorable, a large background may be a good option.
Museum of Science and Industry
Pros and Cons of Outsourcing
Published February 2nd, 2012 in Business - 3 Comments
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 - 5 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 - 6 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 - 5 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.
