10 Effective Custom Facebook Landing Page Designs

Published March 12th, 2013 in Marketing, Social Media - 4 Comments

Facebook allows advertisers to create a custom page where clicks from their promotional content will lead to. A landing page ensures that your customer finds a more focused and targeted message. The more focused the advertising, the better the chances of converting leads to sales.

When it comes to landing page designs, there are some stunning examples out there. Those that use the functionalities of a landing page combined with great graphics. We’ve selected 10 stunning one’s for you here:

1. Starbucks – Blonde Roast

Starbucks’ Blonde Roast campaign offered coffee drinkers a free cup with their regular coffee. Each cup had an illustrated “Light Note” on it – a simple message to brighten your friend’s day. The campaign was so successful that even after Starbucks ran out of actual cups; it launched a Facebook application where people could send cards to their Facebook friends with the same messages and illustrations. The application is easy on the eyes and the mind. It’s simple and elegant with a big green button to get you started.

Social Media Sharing Icons Influence Web Designs

Published January 15th, 2013 in Marketing, Social Media - 8 Comments

Last weekend I participated in my first hackathon ever. Do you know what hackathon is? It’s a 24-hours long marathon where people with money (investors) look for potentially successful development projects. So me and my friends had to build and to present a more or less ready-made project (both from development and business point of view), so that investors would want to spend their money on it. On one of the latest stages of the project development our developers and designers disputed a lot about social media icons to choose. Nobody wanted to give in. This argument gave me an idea to pay more attention to social media icons in web design. What can they look like? What are they really used for? Why do web developers doubt about them?

Guide to Tumblr for Web Designers

Published September 28th, 2012 in Social Media - 4 Comments

If you’re just getting started as a serious web designer, then most likely you’ve debated whether or not you need some kind of blog. It’s fair enough to just have a website, but these days people are looking for regularly updated news and information – even if they don’t read it – they want to know you are regularly interacting with your own website. However, diving into a serious blog this late in the blog-trend game can make you feel like you are trying to shout to the drummer on stage when you’re at the back of a packed concert house filled with screaming fans.

This is where Tumblr comes in. Tumbl. is far from new; it was launched in spring of 2007 and has almost 65 million blogs. So don’t think you won’t have any competition. But what makes Tumblr unique is how fully it embraces micro-blogging. No one will expect Top 10s, How-Tos, and other extensive articles that take a serious amount of time to write professionally. Instead, Tumblr is a place to share pictures, quotes, and if you feel like it, you can choose to occasionally write up something more full-length.

Getting Started with Tumblr

So how do you get started with Tumblr? It’s as easy as anything. Just head over to the Tumblr website and sign up. Tumblr will provide you with a URL that will be something like yourname.tumblr.com and you can pick a theme and start blogging the same day you click yes, I’m ready to tumbl (That’s not actually what the button says, but it could be!)

Next you can redirect your Tumblr account to your own personal URL by going to your domain registrar’s control panel and following the directions you will find there.
Tumblr also provides an array of custom theme designs for you to choose from – or you could find one elsewhere on the web and even pay for a premium design. But to be honest, Tumblr is all about having an easy way to blog, and Tumblr has some awesome themes ready to go for you. Once you choose a theme, Tumblr will let you customize it on the spot – just don’t forget to hit save when you’re done.

10 Pinterest Pages for Design Inspiration

Published September 17th, 2012 in Social Media - 9 Comments

Unless you’ve been in a social media black hole for the last 12 months, you’ll be familiar with Pinterest. The love child of photo-sharing site Flickr and scrapbooking site Tumblr, Pinterest is your online pin board. You literally ‘pin’ images onto a collection of themed boards and their shared with your followers and other users.
As a graphic designer, Pinterest is the online equivalent of being a kid in a sweet shop. There is inspiration for pretty much everything, and it’s all just a click away. You can follow your favourite designers, artists, and photographers, admire their work, and share your own.

Pinteresting Profiles To Follow

Like with every social network out there, some people use it really well. They pin in clear themes, getting the perfect balance between their work, and sharing other peoples’. Others are still struggling to make Pinterest work for them.

We’ve browsed countless profiles and boards to compile a list of 10 great pages you need to follow. Here are your essential Pinterest boards for design inspiration:

Web Designers/Developers to Follow on Google+

Published July 11th, 2012 in Social Media - 8 Comments

Like other major social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest, Google+ offers excellent opportunities for networking and connecting with other professionals in the industry. We thought it might be helpful for Google+ users to have a list of some of the best web designers and developers to follow. Feel free to add your own suggestions and recommendations in the comments of this post, including a link to your own Google+ profile.

You can also follow Vandelay Design on Google+.

15 Amazing Twitter Tools for Increased Productivity

Published February 1st, 2012 in Social Media - 8 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.

21 Resources for Effective Facebook Fan Pages

Published October 26th, 2011 in Social Media - 23 Comments

Most businesses now recognize Facebook as an excellent platform for connecting and communicating with their customers and/or users. As businesses have become more active on Facebook the number of resources available for fan pages has increased as well.

Setting up an effective Facebook fan page isn’t always that easy, but there are plenty of resources out there that can help. In this post we’ll look at some of the best places to get fan page templates that can serve as a starting point, services and apps that allow you to easily create custom fan pages, and apps that help businesses to sell products from their Facebook pages.

Create Fan Pages:

If you’re looking for an easy way to create a fan page for your own business or for your clients, here are some resources that may help.

Pagemodo
Create fan pages with no coding required. Pricing from free to $33 per month. Pro templates are available for plans starting at $13 per month.

40 Sets of Free Social Media Icons

Published July 6th, 2011 in Social Media - 42 Comments

Designers love free icon sets. Having quality icons can help to make a site’s design look complete, and can also help with the usability of the site. Social media icons are some of the most commonly used icons, especially in blog design.

Fortunately, there are a number of free sets of quality social media icons. In this post we’ll feature 40 social media icon sets from various designers. Click on the links to be led to the source where the icons can be downloaded. As always when you are dealing with freebies, check the terms and conditions to be sure that you’re using them in a way that is allowed by the designer.

ElegantThemes Social Media Icons

45 Design Blogs on Facebook

Published October 28th, 2010 in Social Media - 19 Comments

Last week we launched the official Vandelay Design Facebook page. There are a lot of other design blogs on Facebook, and we thought it might be helpful for Facebook users if we put together a list. So if you’re interested in design and you’re on Facebook, here are some other places where you can get connected.

Vandelay Design (Blog, Facebook)

5 Steps to a Stronger Social Media Presence

Published September 29th, 2010 in Business, Social Media - 21 Comments

Social media and social networking sites present tremendous opportunities to all kinds of business, including web design. If you’re not currently active with social media you are missing out on one of the best methods for networking and for free or low-cost marketing.

Many designers who are using social media are not getting the most out of it. In this post we’ll look at 5 simple steps that you can take to improve your effectiveness with social media, regardless of whether you are already a user or if you have not yet gotten started with social media.

Step 1: Identify Your Goals and Priorities

It’s important to set a solid foundation for your efforts with social media by first defining what you hope to get out of it. This is a critical step that many designers and freelancers overlook. Yes, social media can have a significant impact on your business, but you need to have some direction or else you will be wasting your time.

Some common goals or priorities for designers who are using social media include finding new clients, networking with other designers, increasing traffic to their website or blog, improving name recognition and branding, finding a new job, and simply enjoying activity with the community of users. It’s possible to improve your business or career in any number of ways with social media, but you need to be aware of what is important to you because it should shape the way in which you use social media.