Thinking of Selling Premium Themes? Group Interview with Four Leaders in the Premium Theme Industry

You’ve probably seen a lot of information about premium themes, and maybe you are considering creating some of your own to sell. If so, I think you’ll be able to learn a lot from this brief interview with four leaders in the premium theme/template industry.When selling premium themes, you have a few different options. You can sell them at your existing blog or portfolio site, sell them through a larger marketplace, or create a new business around the theme sales. In this post you’ll hear from designers and business owners that have a variety of different approaches to the end result of selling themes.

The four participants are Cory Miller of iThemes, Collis Ta’eed of ThemeForest, Ben Harper of Templamatic, and Adriaan Pienaar of WooThemes.

Best of September: This Month in Web Design

As always, it’s been a busy month for design blogs. Here is my collection of the best articles and resources I’ve come across this month.

Web Design and Development:

How Do Cheaters Redesign and Still Win? – Pro Blog Design

Body Border 2: Fade in with Gradient – CSS-Tricks

75 Really Useful JavaScript Techniques – Smashing Magazine

30 More Must See Comment Designs for Blog Designers – Blog Design Blog

CSS Typography: Contrast Techniques, Tutorials and Best Practices – Noupe

2 Great Web-Based Alternatives to PHPMyAdmin – Primal Skill Blog

Issues Involved with Website Communication

Regardless of what type of website you’re developing (a blog, a portfolio site, an e-commerce site, etc.), the success of the site will hinge on being able to communicate effectively with visitors and readers. On the subject of communication, there are a number of potential issues that need to be considered:

30 Creative Website Headers

One of the first things new visitors will notice upon arriving at your website is your header. Some sites are able to make an excellent first impression by featuring an artistic or creative header. This mini gallery post is a collection of some of the more inspiring headers out there.

enRoute Student Film Festival

Observing Major News Websites

Designers of news websites face significant challenges in trying to develop an attractive, usable site that gets all of the necessary items on the page with as little clutter as possible. Studying the layouts and design techniques used on news sites can be a beneficial experience even for designers who only work on smaller sites and blog design.

Announcing the 3 Winners of a Free Theme from Templamatic

Thanks to everyone who commented and showed an interest in the contest from a few days ago for a free premium WordPress theme from Templamatic. The response was very good and apparently a lot of people wanted the theme!
The winners of the With Style theme are:

Ben’s Choice – IcyOne2 (chosen because theme theme will be [...]

35 Tutorials for Mastering Photoshop Brushes

For Photoshop users, downloading free brushes and creating your own custom brushes can quickly help you to achieve more effective results and improve productivity and efficiency at the same time. There are essentially unlimited options when working with brushes, so it’s a skill that can always be further developed.

Regardless of your skill level in working with brushes you should find some tutorials here for you. Some cover the basic uses and functionality of brushes, some will teach you various ways to create your own custom brushes, and some will help you to develop your skills by using them as an integral part of a design.

Rotating Brushes

A simple way to rotate any brush to fit your needs.

Win a Free Premium Theme from Templamatic

A few months ago we gave away a free license to a premium WordPress theme, and today the opportunity for Vandelay Design blog readers to get a free theme is back! Templamatic has offered to give away three copies of it’s recently-released theme, With Style.

25 Beautiful Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 4

A few of the most popular posts on this blog are the 3 collections of inspirational, minimal web designs (see part 1, part 2, and part 3). So why stop there? These 25 sites are also clean and attractive.

Jaboh

Category Hacks for WordPress Theme Designers

One of the fundamental building blocks of the WordPress blog structure is the category. Of course the category serves as a way to organize the content and help visitors with navigation, but it also provides theme developers with opportunities to do some different things to make the theme a bit more distinct or more effective.

In this post we’ll take a look at a number of things you can do with WordPress coding that involve categories in one way or another. Hopefully this will be a helpful guide that you can refer to whenever you’re developing a new theme.