25 Portfolio Site Designs Using Illustration

Designer portfolio sites often showcase creativity and the skills of the designer. If you browse around at current portfolio sites you’ll see a lot of illustration being used in the design. In this post we’ll feature 25 portfolios that use illustration. To see more portfolios please visit our gallery site Folio Focus.

Rype Arts

Win a Free Template of Your Choice from TemplateWire

TemplateWire has offered to give free templates to three Vandelay Design readers. If you’re not familiar with TemplateWire they are a leading marketplace of CSS templates, Flash templates, and logo templates. For $49 you can get 12 months of unlimited access to all of their premium templates. Or you can get 3 months of access for $29. You can use the templates on an unlimited number of websites for you or your clients.

Showcase of Transparency in Web Design

Transparency is being used in an increasing number of websites. In some cases transparency subtly adds to the quality and character of the design, and in other cases it can be a major design element. In this post we’ll feature 35 websites that are making excellent use of transparency.

2am

10 Keys to Effective Non-Profit Organization Websites

Non profit organizations tend to have limited budgets and limited involvement from members for planning, designing and maintaining websites. This often results in a site that doesn’t really achieve everything that it could for the organization and the people involved. In recent years there has been an increasing number of organizations that are doing great things with their websites and truly making them valuable and effective.

In this article we’ll look at the keys to an effective non-profit organization website, while showcasing some examples from specific sites.

1. Clear Description of the Organization’s Mission/Purpose

Many of the visitors that will be arriving at the website will not be familiar with the organization. Upon arriving, they should be able to quickly get an idea of why the organization exists and a basic picture of what they do.

The full mission statement or purpose statement is sometimes part of an About Us page, but first time visitors to the home page should have an idea of why the organization exists without even visiting another page. The About Us page can of course provide more details, but visitors should not need to navigate through the site in order to understand the basic purpose of the organization.

There are a number of different ways to help convey a message of mission or purpose on a home page. In some cases there will be a brief one or two sentence statement that is located in a prominent position. Photos and images can also help to communicate purpose.

Design Trend Showcase: 30 Horizontal Websites

Horizontal websites have been increasing in popularity over the past year or two. Although the approach isn’t a good fit for every project, a horizontal layout can provide designers with an opportunity to showcase some creativity and to break out of the box. As you may notice from the sites showcased here, portfolio sites of designers and photographers are probably the most likely type of site to use a horizontal layout right now. Here is a look at 30 sites for your own inspiration.

Aubrey Edwards

One-Page Portfolios: Trends and Showcase

One-page portfolios are certainly a popular trend among web and graphic designers. Many designers have created one-page portfolios that use a lot of creativity, but there are also some elements or characteristics that are very common among them.

In this post we’ll look at ten trends of one-page portfolios with examples of each. At the end of the post we’ll include a showcase for your own design inspiration, plus some resources to help you if you’re interested in creating your own one-page portfolio.

Trends of One-Page Portfolios:

1. Focus is on the Work

One-page portfolios tend to keep the work of the designer as the focus of the page. More traditional portfolio sites may include screen shots of some work on the homepage, but generally the work in the portfolio will be displayed on a separate page.

Because one-page portfolios include all of the elements of a portfolio site (the work, biographical information, services information, contact, etc.), the contents of the page are often arranged to emphasize the work from the portfolio.

James Lai Creative
James Lai Creative uses a prominent location on the page to display items from the portfolio. Click on a thumbnail and you’ll see a larger image above.

Free Set of Office Icons by IconShock

Our friends at IconShock have designed another set of free icons for readers of Vandelay Design. IconShock designs high quality icon sets and in recent months they have provided the design community with a lot of great, free icons.

This set includes five icons of typical office items. The icons are free for personal or commercial purposes, and they are available below as PNG files or as Adobe Illustrator files.

Win Free Die Cut Business Cards from UPrinting!

Our friends at UPrinting have offered to give 500 free die cut business cards each to five readers of the Vandelay Design blog! If you’ve been wanting to impress potential clients with some high-quality business cards, this is your chance to get them for free.

25 Creative E-Commerce Website Designs

E-Commerce sites are often considered to be boring and unattractive, however, that is not always the case. This post showcases 25 e-commerce sites that demonstrate creativity in the design. It may be the layout, graphics, design style or site structure, but all of them break the mould of the typical e-commerce site. For more inspiration from e-commerce sites, see our gallery CartFrenzy.

Ride Four Ever

Showcase of Floral Typography

If you frequently browse through sites like deviantART and the Behance Network you’ve no doubt come across a number of designs that use typography and floral effects. In this post we’ll showcase some excellent works of this kind from various designers. If you would like more inspiration from typography and text effects please see our gallery site TypeInspire.

Butterfly