25 Embossed Business Cards for Your Inspiration
Published July 28th, 2010 in Marketing - 30 Comments
Designers are often looking for examples of creative business cards for inspiration, whether it be for designing their own cards or for client work. In the past we have showcased letterpress business cards, die cut business cards, and double sided business cards. Today we’ll look at 25 examples of embossed business cards.
25 Beautiful Travel and Tourism Websites
Published July 26th, 2010 in Galleries - 33 Comments
Websites in the travel industry often place an emphasis on the design and appearance because a good-looking site will hopefully draw more interest and excitement for the destination. Many of them also use nature-inspired designs (see last week’s post 35 Beautiful Web Designs Inspired by Nature for more examples). Here you’ll find some of the best websites from the travel and tourism industry.
15 Proven Ways to Gain Exposure for Your Design Portfolio
Published July 21st, 2010 in Business, Marketing - 39 Comments
With so many web and graphic designers out there, getting the attention of potential clients and landing work can be a major challenge. The portfolio site is one of the most important assets for a designer, and an effective portfolio site will be an invaluable resource for keeping the business moving forward.
For many designers creating an attractive portfolio site is not the problem, getting people to see it is often much more of an issue. In order for the portfolio site to truly do it’s job it must be well-designed and it must attract the right types of visitors. In this post we’ll look at 15 things that you can do to increase the effectiveness of your portfolio site by getting more exposure for it.
1. Have a High-Quality Design for Your Portfolio Site
Not only is the quality of design of the items in your portfolio important, but the design of your portfolio site itself will also have a big impact on potential clients. Clients will expect a designer to have an attractive and usable site, otherwise they will question the work that the designer will be able to do for them.
When designing and coding your portfolio site be sure that it is getting all of the attention that it deserves. After all, it will be one of the most important aspects of your business, so it should not be rushed.
Impressive portfolio sites are great for encouraging visitors to contact you about their project, and they are also more likely to attract links and attention from other designers and bloggers.
35 Beautiful Web Designs Inspired by Nature
Published July 19th, 2010 in Galleries - 28 Comments
When creating a beautiful and memorable web design, many designers turn to nature to be inspired by the beauty of what surrounds us. Nature-inspired web design has become more common in recent years as large backgrounds and extensive use of images are being used. In this post we’ll take a look at some amazing examples of designs that can be created to incorporate various aspects of nature into a website.
Client Retention: A Key Ingredient for Freelancing Success
Published July 15th, 2010 in Business - 13 Comments
Working as a freelance designer is a challenging job. Not only do you have to be a skilled designer, but you also need to be able to find work and run a profitable business. Landing new clients can be a lot of work and can require a considerable amount of time on your part. Once you have the client, retaining that client can be highly beneficial for your business.
A long-term or repeat client could be any number of things. Maybe you’ve designed a website for a client a few years ago and they just came back to you because it’s time to update their site with a fresh design. Or maybe the client needs on-going work each month and they’re hiring you to provide that work in addition to your one-time services of designing their site.
With content management systems most clients no longer have to hire a designer to make basic updates and additions to their sites, but many clients still have a need for a designer to perform various services on an on-going basis or at some point in the future. Hopefully the information presented in this article will reveal the potential that this presents and will help you to land a few on-going clients of your own.
Comment to Win a Free License for SlideShowBox
Published July 14th, 2010 in Site News - 155 Comments
Our friends at Jumpeye Components have offered to give five readers of the Vandelay Design Blog a free license to SlideShowBox Premium HTML!
35 jQuery Animation Tutorials
Published July 12th, 2010 in Web Development - 28 Comments
Creative designers can do some amazing things with jQuery. A wide variety of animation effects are possible, and these 35 tutorials provide excellent learning resources for anyone who is wanting to brush up their skills in this area. You’ll find tutorials for creative animated navigation menus, as well as for other types of animation that use jQuery instead of Flash.
Animate Image Filling Up Using jQuery
25 of the Best Calligraphy Fonts for Designers
Published July 7th, 2010 in Design - 24 Comments
Having the right fonts is critical to successful web and graphic design. Fortunately, there are a lot of quality free fonts that are available for use. In this post we’ll feature 25 of the best calligraphy fonts for download. Be sure to check the restrictions of any font before using on a commercial project.
35 High-Quality and Free Paper Textures
Published July 5th, 2010 in Design - 13 Comments
Paper textures are extremely useful and versatile in web and graphic design. Whether it is brown paper, notebook paper, wrinkled paper, or something else, they are frequently used by designers. In this post we’ll feature some of the best free paper textures. Always be sure to check the license and terms before using.
For more textures please see:
25 Beautiful Minimalist Websites – Part VIII
Published July 1st, 2010 in Galleries - 25 Comments
Throughout the existence of this blog our readers have appreciated posts on minimalism more than just about any other topic. Here we will continue our series of showcasing exceptional examples of minimalism in web design.
