Many blogs are using excerpts to display content on the front page. The use of excerpts gives designers a little bit more freedom and some opportunity to create an attractive and unique front page. In this post we’ll showcase for blog front pages that are using excerpts.
Our friends at IconShock have designed another set of icons especially for the readers of Vandelay Design. This pack includes five icons with a business theme. As you will see from the preview, it includes a briefcase icon, a calculator icon, a phone icon, a coins icon, and a pie chart icon.
While user experience is important on all types of websites, it is especially critical for ecommerce websites where visitors will be making purchases. A poor user experience will result in visitors having difficulty finding what they want, frustration during shopping, and many lost sales. In this post we will showcase the design of 35 e-commerce websites for your own UI design inspiration. The sites that are showcased in this post have also been featured at CartFrenzy, our gallery of the best ecommerce web design.
Navigation menus are, of course, important for usability purposes and creating a user-friendly website, but they also provide opportunities to add some visual appeal to the design. In this post we’ll showcase 40 examples of attractive navigation menus, including a variety of different types and styles.
For more on navigation menus please see:
We’re happy to announce that Vandelay Design is now partnering with Fanurio to make its time tracking and invoicing software accessible to more designers. We worked with Fanurio a few months ago to give away some free licenses to readers and the response was tremendous, so we decided to work together on a more permanent basis. We wanted to offer something special to all of you to kick off this partnership. Starting today (November 11, 2009), for the next 35 days you will be able to try and buy Fanurio for $49, a $10 discount from the regular price. Fanurio always comes with a 30 day free trial of the full software, so the 35 days will give you enough time to download it and try it out before the coupon code expires.
The coupon code to use when purchasing is “vandelay2009″. More details at the end of this post.
Lighting effects are a great way to make an impact with a design, and there are plenty of options for creating these effects with Photoshop. In the past we have published collections of Photoshop tutorials for lighting effects and they drawn a lot of interest from readers, so here is a collection of newer tutorials. For more, see:
Colorful Light Effect in Photoshop
While front pages are usually the part of blogs that get showcased, blog design includes a lot of other details that can add to the overall look and appearance of the blog, not to mention usability. The pages of individual blog posts provide opportunities for design and styling in a number of different areas.
In this post we’ll look at a few aspects of blog posts and showcase some design elements that are used to make the post more helpful, inviting, or attractive.
At the start of posts, some blogs include additional elements or design techniques to improve the post in one way or another.
ANidea’s appraoch is pretty unique. Each post has a lead image that appears above the right sidebar, and just below that is a list of related posts.
Color schemes have a huge impact on the end result of a design. In this post we’ll feature 25 websites that use bright and vibrant color schemes very effectively. This is the fifth post that has been published in this series. You can see the previous four here.
Pricing pages are very common for sites of web apps, web hosting and other types of services. These pages are critical to the success of the company because they will have a significant influence on the visitors who are trying to make a buying decision. Pricing pages typically give the necessary details regarding the various plans and options, and they encourage visitors to take action.
In this post we’ll look at a number of trends in pricing page design, along with several examples for each.
Most of the pricing pages that we are looking at in this post include some sort of table or chart that shows the various options that are available for purchase. Obviously, this is helpful for buyers to be able to compare their options and determine which is the best choice for them. However, sometimes having too many possible choices can actually make things more difficult. Some pricing pages are using an emphasis on one option to help it stand out to visitors. In some cases it is listed as the most popular or best value, and in other cases it is simply emphasized in some way.
Aside from attempting to make the decision easier for visitors, emphasis also gives the designer the ability to control which of the options will get the most attention from visitors. In some cases it is used on the most expensive option, but in many cases it is not. Let’s look at some examples.
Crazy Egg emphasizes their basic plan (the lowest-priced option) by using a green background color compared the the gray background of the other plans, plus the column background is also a little bit larger.
UPrinting has offered to give 500 die cut business cards to five readers of the Vandelay Design blog! If you’re interested in having a unique business card that helps you to stand out to potential clients, this is a great opportunity.
Updated regularly with articles, resources, and inspiration for web designers.
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