Vandelay Design Blog

25 Websites with Creative and Unique Layouts

Vandelay Design — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:34:16 +0000

If you’re looking for a way to break out of the box with a design, creating a unique layout is one way to accomplish this. In this post we’ll look at 25 sites that make use of a creative and unique layout.

Alexarts

Missscha’s Photogallery

Jan Sochor Photography

DJ Yura

X Producciones Graficas

Get London Reading

McCormick Creative

Tangled Decals

The Amazing Idea Machine

For more design inspiration, please see:

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25 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating 3D Text Effects

Vandelay Design — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:43:38 +0000

With some creativity you can create amazing text effects with Photoshop. In this post we’ll feature 25 of the best tutorials for creating 3D text effects. There are a variety of different types of effects, so hopefully you can find some new tricks to learn.

If you’re looking for examples of inspirational uses of text, please see our new gallery site, TypeInspire.

Awesome Milk Typography Effect in Photoshop

Create a 3D Text Scene Using Photoshop

Photoshop Tutorial: Stunning 3D Effect in 30 Minutes

3D Text on Fire

3D Text Effects

Design Soft Stylized 3D Type

Kaboom! Exploding Text

Valentines Day - Photoshop Style

Glowing and Sparkling Intense Light 3D Logo

Stunning Neon Light 3D Typography

Create a Spectacular Grass Text Effect in Photoshop

Creating a Spectacular Flaming Meteor Effect on Text

Create a Spectacular Style Text Effect

Hell of Tutorial in Photoshop

Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography

Papercraft Text Effect

Create a 3D Flowery Text Effect

How to Create a Realistic 3D Stone Text Effect

Create 3D Text with Some Extreme Lighting

3D Text Effect in Photoshop (video)

Transformers Effect

Create a Colorful 3D Text Explosion

3D Text Effect

How to Create High Quality Metal 3D Text in Photoshop

How to Quickly Create a Stylish Retro Text Effect

For more Photoshop tutorials, please see:

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35+ Horizontal Websites for Your Design Inspiration

Vandelay Design — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:39:17 +0000

Websites that use horizontal scrolling in addition to, or instead of, vertical scrolling are becoming more popular. While this trend isn’t a good idea in every situation, the sites showcased here may give you some ideas or inspiration for using this approach in one of your own projects.

Suie Paparude

Sonido

Eric Ryan Anderson

Tyler Thompson Blog

The Horizontal Way

Alex Flueras Photography

C’N'C Costume National Blog

Publicidade Viva

The Box Doodle Project

Jan Sochor Photography

Synthetic Infatuation

F Claire Baxter

180 Degrees

Eolo Perfido Photography

Paolo Boccardi Photography

Resources/Tutorials:

Useful Tips to Design Horizontal Website Layout - Woork

How to Create a Horizontally Scrolling Site - CSS Tricks

What’s Your Opinion of Horizontal Websites?

Do you like of dislike websites with horizontal scrolling? Personally, I don’t really like horizontal scrolling as a visitor, but I do like the fact that many of these sites show some creativity in layout.

For more design inspiration, please see:

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Premium Theme and Template Options for Real Estate Websites

Vandelay Design — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:35:42 +0000

Most people who are looking to buy or sell a home are doing research online. As a result, there is a great need for real estate companies and agents to have a website that will provide potential buyers and sellers with the information that they are looking for.

Having a website that can be easily maintained is ideal since listings will come and go rather frequently. WordPress is pretty popular for real estate sites because some quality premium themes exist and it gives the agent or the company the ability to manage the site on their own.

In this post we’ll feature 19 premium themes and templates that have been created specifically for real estate. While there are some free real estate themes and templates available, the quality is generally much lower than the premium options. Of course, having a custom design will allow for much more flexibility, but these are the options for low price ranges.

If you have any experience working with real estate agent sites and you have any recommendations, please share in the comments.

WordPress Themes:

Agent Theme - $59.95 at Studio Press

WP Pro Real Estate - $25 at ThemeForest

Real Estate Theme - $35 at ThemeForest

de Casa - 39€ at ThemeShift

iReal Estate - $79.95 at Real Estate Themes

Open House Real Estate - $79.95 at Gorilla Themes

The Bel Air - $79.95 at Gorilla Themes

Smooth Real Estate - $79.95 at Gorilla Themes

Sofa Real Estate - $25 at ThemeForest

HTML/CSS Templates:

A few of these are static versions of premium WordPress themes featured above. They are available both ways.

Pro Real Estate - $10 at ThemeForest

Real Estate HTML Template - $15 at ThemeForest

Premium Real Estate - $15 at ThemeForest

Real Estate Web Template - $12 at ThemeForest

Real Estate Template - $65 at TemplateMonster (includes both Flash and non-Flash versions)

Real Estate Template - $64 at TemplateMonster

Real Estate Template - $64 at TemplateMonster (includes both Flash and non-Flash versions)

Real Estate Template - Dream Template - Memberships start at $59.95 per year

Real Estate Template - $35 at Template Kingdom

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25 of the Best Photographer Portfolio Websites - Part Two

Vandelay Design — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:24:50 +0000

Last year I published 25 of the Best Photographer Portfolio Websites. Today I’d like to follow up with another set of 25 sites for your design inspiration.

In this collection you’ll see a good deal of variety between the sites. Some use a minimal layout that showcases the photos without distraction, and others are a bit more flashy.

C & J Willis Photography

Carlos Alonso Bodas

Meg Perotti

CirilJazbec

Jan Sochor Photography

Charlatan Messiah

Mark Lobo Photography

Scott Lawler Photography

Raven Photography

Kenn Reay

James Day Photography

Jesus Vilamajo

If you enjoy getting inspiration from excellent portfolio sites, you’ll love our new gallery site Folio Focus, which showcases the best portfolio sites.

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Win a Free License for Fanurio Time Tracking and Invoicing Software

Vandelay Design — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:36:07 +0000

Tracking time and dealing with invoices and finances are not the favorite part of freelancing for most designers. Fortunately, there are products that can help to make it less painful and cumbersome. Fanurio is offering five free licenses to their time tracking software to Vandelay Design readers.

If you’re not familiar with Fanurio, it is a software application that provides freelancers with a number of features for tracking time, invoicing, and tracking the status of those invoices. Invoice templates are available, even as part of the free trial. In addition, Fanurio includes a reporting system that will help you to analyze your use of time and how it impacts your income. For more information on the features see Fanurio’s Features Overview.

There are many options for invoicing and time tracking, and most are web-based solutions that involve a monthly fee. Fanurio is cross-platform software that comes with a one-time charge of $59 to purchase the license with no on-going monthly fees.

The Giveaway Details:

If you would like to win one of these five licenses, please leave a comment on this post to express your interest. On Saturday, June 13th I will use a random number generator to select five random winners. At that time I will update this post to announce the winners, and I’ll contact them via email (please leave a valid email with your comment so you can be contacted if you win).

If you aren’t one of the lucky five winners, you can always download a free trial of Fanurio to see how you like it.

Good luck!

UPDATE: The contest is now over. Thanks to everyone who participated. Here are the winners:

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Gallery of 3D Elements in Web Design

Vandelay Design — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:37:24 +0000

If you pay attention to web trends you have probably noticed that a growing number of sites are using designs that give the appearance of three dimensions. 3D design elements can help to make the design look more unique, as well as to highlight something in particular by drawing the visitor’s attention. In this post you’ll see 25 websites that use some type of 3D element in the design.

The Saturn Project

Eurosong

Carl Cartee

Canadian Friends of the Israel Museum

For more design inspiration, please see:

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Announcing the Launch of 5 Niche Galleries

Vandelay Design — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:49:09 +0000

Today I’m happy to announce that I have launched a network of five niche gallery sites! Many of us visit design and CSS galleries on a consistent basis for design inspiration, and there is no shortage of galleries to choose from. Some of my favorite galleries are those that exist to showcase work of a specific kind (We Love WP is a good example, it is a showcase of WordPress-powered sites).

Niche galleries are especially useful for designers because they allow you to get the specific type of inspiration that you are looking for without being overwhelmed by too much that doesn’t interest you. You can go to a niche gallery and quickly find helpful and relevant inspiration that applies to your own situation. With that in mind, I have chosen five topics for galleries that I thought would be of use to many designers.

If you have any interest in some of these types of design, please check out what has been posted already and subscribe to the feed or follow on Twitter. Each gallery has been launched with more than 30 showcased items and they will be updated consistently (The amount of new additions will depend partly on how many quality submissions are received, so please feel free to submit your work for consideration. Ideally, there will be about 10 additions each week per gallery).

Minimal Exhibit

Some of the most popular posts that have ever been published on the Vandelay Design blog are the collections of websites with a minimalist design style. Minimal Exhibit is a niche gallery that showcases only sites with excellent use of minimalism in the design.

Minimal Exhibit RSS Feed | Minimal Exhibit on Twitter

CartFrenzy

Designing an e-commerce website brings its own unique set of challenges. If you’re looking for inspiration for some of the most well-designed e-commerce sites around, CartFrenzy will be an excellent resource.

CartFrenzy RSS Feed | CartFrenzy on Twitter

Folio Focus

A portfolio website is one of the most significant assets of any designer, and these sites are often excellent examples of creative and innovative design. Folio Focus showcases the best portfolio sites of all kinds. You’ll find inspiration from the sites of freelance designers, design firms, photographers and more.

Folio Focus RSS Feed | Folio Focus on Twitter

Blog Design Heroes

Blog Design Heroes is a showcase of the best blog designs. Whether you are designing a blog theme for a client or for yourself, you’ll find tons of inspiration here.

Blog Design Heroes RSS Feed | Blog Design Heroes on Twitter

TypeInspire

For typography lovers, TypeInspire will be constant source of inspiration. The gallery will feature typographic works of all kinds, including websites with exemplary use of typography, poster design (from sites like deviantART and Behance), other forms of graphic design, and anything else that is appropriate.

TypeInspire RSS Feed | TypeInspire on Twitter

How You Can Get Involved

Each of the five galleries has a submission form that will allow you to submit your own work, or that of others, for consideration. I would love to have your participation in this way as the success and usefullness of these galleries will ultimately depend on the community of users that develop around them. Also, feel free to leave comments on any of the posts. I’m greatly appreciative of the readers that have made Vandelay Design and DesignM.ag successful and fun to work on, and I hope that some of you will also benefit from the inspiration that is available at these new galleries.

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Keep an Inspiration Notebook to Retain Offline Design Inspiration

Vandelay Design — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:44:34 +0000

Finding inspiration is important to designers of all kinds. For web designers there is plenty of design inspiration available online through gallery sites and design blogs that compile posts for inspiration. This abundance of potential inspiration makes it quick and easy to browse through these sources, but unfortunately it also tends to make many of us forget that there are limitless sources of inspiration all around us in every day life that don’t involve the internet.

When you’re looking for design inspiration quickly, it’s not always easy or possible to use a variety of sources. One habit that can help with this is to keep a notebook, binder, or folder for other types of inspiration that you come across in print, such as magazine cover or brochures. This way when you are in need of inspiration without having time to hunt it down, you can pull out your inspiration notebook and browse through what you have already collected.

Why Keep an Inspiration Notebook?

Become Less Reliant on Online Source of Inspiration
If you find yourself drawing inspiration only from other websites, it’s likely that you could improve your creativity and your design by branching out and drawing from other sources of inspiration. If you follow this blog you know that I like and appreciate inspiration from other websites, but when we stop looking outside of the online world for inspiration we put ourselves at risk of simply following trends in web design without a real purpose.

Encourages You to Pay Attention to a Wide Variety of Design Disciplines
Once you’ve started your inspiration notebook and you’re regularly adding to it, you’ll find yourself paying closer attention to things all around you that could provide excellent design inspiration. Rather than just focusing on inspiration from other websites, it will help to open you up to a wider variety of sources.

Will Likely Lead to More Originality in Your Design
As I already mentioned, taking in inspiration from more places will help to promote greater originality in web design. Web design is like anything else, it has trends that come and go frequently. If other websites are your only source of inspiration you’ll probably find yourself following popular trends rather than branching out and implementing something more original. With an inspiration notebook you’ll have all kinds of sources at your disposal that can help you to come up with some creative and original ideas.

It Will Always be Available When You Need it
After you’ve started to compile some great sources of design inspiration in your notebook, you can turn to it at any time when you need it. Most designers have a great appreciation for offline inspiration, but without having a way to keep track of the things you come across it can take a while to find inspiration from these sources. With a notebook, all you’ll have to do is pull it out and start flipping through it without any real time requirement.

How to Keep an Inspiration Notebook

Get a Binder or Folder
The obvious first step is to have someplace to keep the various items of inspiration that you find. It doesn’t really matter what you use, as long as it works well for you. It could be a 3-ring binder or a loose leaf notebook, or anything else that allows you to store things that you find and easily browse through them later.

Categorize It
Most likely, as you add items over a period of time it will get more difficult to find what you’re looking for. In this case, it’s a good idea to categorize the contents by using tabs or something else to separate the various sections. You may want to categorize it according to the type of item, such as pages from a magazine, brochures, business cards, etc. Alternatively, you could categorize it according to the design style of the type of inspiration that it provides, such as typographic or color schemes.

Add to it Consistently
In order for the inspiration notebook to be of the most use, you’ll need to consistently add items to it so that you’ll always be able to find great sources of inspiration when you need them. Get in the habit of looking at items around you in your daily life that and add them to the notebook if you find them inspiring in some way. You may also want to add post-it notes or something to make notes to yourself about aspects of the design or elements that you think may be useful to you in the future.

Make a Habit of Turning to Your Inspiration Notebook
If the inspiration notebook is going to be useful to you long-term, you need to not only add new items to it, but you must also rely on it as a source of inspiration on a regular basis. When you’re looking for inspiration online, make an effort to also spend a few minutes browsing through your notebook. Once you have developed the habits of actively watching for items to add form your daily life as well as turning to it for inspiration, the notebook will be very valuable to you as a designer.

What to Include in Your Inspiration Notebook

The point of keeping an inspiration notebook is to add various sources to your regular inspiration in addition to just online sources, however there are some limitations. Obviously, you’re limited to whatever items you can fit inside a notebook or folder. Many designers enjoy drawing inspiration from nature and the outdoors. While you can’t keep the outdoors in a notebook, you can keep photos of inspirational landscapes and scenes from nature. So while there are limitations, there are also plenty of opportunities to use a notebook for this purpose.

As you go about your daily life, you see design and creativity all around you. Here are some things that you can easily keep in an inspiration notebook for a later time.

Magazine covers
Magazine pages and layouts
Newspapers
Junk mail
Brochures and pamphlets
Fliers
Advertisements
Business cards
Letterhead and stationary
Photographs
Post cards
Album covers
Stickers
Anything else you can find

What’s Your Approach to Keeping Track of Offline Inspiration?

How do you find and retain sources of design inspiration aside from the internet? Do you find that having an organized system makes it more useful for you?

Looking to Hire a Designer or Developer?

40 of the Best Websites of Non-Profit Organizations

Vandelay Design — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:49:22 +0000

Budget limitations are common with non-profit and charitable organizations. As a result, organizations often compromise on the need for an effective and attractive website. However, the websites shown here represent some of the most well-designed websites of non-profits.

The Memphis Zoo

Family Life Network

Custodial Abuse

Common Good Radio

Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research

The Society of Publication Designers

Wiser

Take the Walk

Glocal Adventures

Here’s Life Mission Africa

Housing Works

Global Oneness Project