The Best Email Newsletters for Designers
Published July 5th, 2011 in Design - 8 Comments
The web/graphic design community includes a huge number of active blogs that post articles, tutorials, inspiration, and other types of content. Design blogs are a part of the daily routine for many designers, but there are also several quality email newsletters that cover topics related to design and development.
In this post we’ll highlight some of the best newsletters out there for designers. If you enjoy getting helpful information and news in your inbox, take a look at the newsletters on this list and see if there are any that are of interest to you.
Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine not only runs the most popular blog for web designers, they also have an email newsletter that is published every two weeks. Their newsletter issues include industry news, inspiration, and links to useful websites and apps.
Create Re-Usable Button Styles in Photoshop
Published June 30th, 2011 in Design - 6 Comments
Buttons are an extremely common design element that are used by almost every website. Web buttons are critical for usability and navigation, and they can also be used to help direct the action of the user as you encourage them to add a product to a shopping cart, take a tour, get more information, or contact you.
Creating new buttons while keeping the same style can be very simple by using Photoshop’s layer styles. In this post we’ll take a quick look at how you can create your own button layer styles to save yourself some time.
You may have had situations in the past where you found yourself creating multiple buttons for a mockup and adding the same layer styles over and over again. Or you may have wanted to create a new button that matches the style of an existing button, but you can’t remember the details of the layer effects that were used. Both of these situations could be made much easier if the button effects were saved as a layer style that could be re-used at any time.
Layer styles are a preset in Photoshop, like brushes, patterns, and custom shapes. Layer styles can be saved as an .asl file and then can be loaded at any time, or distributed with others working on the project.
Creating Button Styles
Let’s start by creating a basic button in Photoshop.
Set the foreground color to #166ecc and the background color to #4495ee. Select the rounded rectangle tool with a radius of 10 pixels and draw a rectangle that is 250 pixels wide and 40 pixels high.
Save 20% on Your First 12 Months of Hosting with Eleven2!
Published June 29th, 2011 in Hosting - 5 Comments
Every website needs quality, affordable hosting. We’re happy to announce that our host, Eleven2, is offering a 20% discount for the first twelve months on new plans with the promo code “vandelay” (please continue reading for details)!
Several months ago we posted a few coupon codes that would save you some money on the first month of a hosting account with Eleven2, and a number of readers took advantage of that promo. That offer drew enough response that we thought that this deal is certainly worth mentioning. We use Eleven2 ourselves and we frequently recommend them to our clients as well (we’ve written a more detailed review of Eleven2 if you are interested).
25 Beautiful Navigation Menus
Published June 28th, 2011 in Galleries - 20 Comments
Navigation menus are a critical part of web design because of their importance for usability and creating a position user experience. Websites with poor navigational structure or a lack of clarity in navigation will frustrate visitors and result in people leaving the site without finding the right pages and content.
Aside from the usability aspect, navigation menus also provide designers with the opportunity to create something attractive. In this post we’ll showcase 25 websites that have beautiful menus. You’ll see a variety of different styles, which should help with providing inspiration for your own designs.
Design Inspiration: 35 Photo Manipulations
Published June 27th, 2011 in Galleries - 14 Comments
The things that can be accomplished with Photoshop are quite amazing. Designers who are skilled at photo manipulation can use their creativity to produce stunning results. In this post we’ll feature 35 pieces of work from various designers, for your inspiration.
If you want to learn more about how to create your own photo manipulations please see:
- 30 Photo Manipulation Tutorials for Photoshop
- 30 Outstanding Tutorials for Photo Manipulation in Photoshop
- 25 Photoshop Tutorials for Photo Manipulations
Credit: Roberto Gamito
How to Successfully Localize Your Design Business
Published June 23rd, 2011 in Business - 19 Comments
Standing out from the huge, and always increasing, numbers of web and graphic designers can be a very daunting task. If you are having a difficult time finding enough work to keep you busy you may want to consider focusing on local clients. There are a few significant reasons to consider this:
- You’ll have fewer competitors in search engines and in the marketplace by focusing in on this target market.
- Clients often prefer to work with someone local.
- Developing your reputation and building referral business can be easier by targeting your specific area.
Although it is not a strategy that every freelancer or design agency needs to follow, localizing the business has produced positive results for many. If you find yourself struggling to land enough clients to stay busy take a look at the tips in this article to see if localizing is something that you would like to do.
If you would like to get more business from local clients and build your business around this target market, here is a look at some things that you can do to make this happen.
Comment to Win a Premium WordPressTheme from ThemeTrust!
Published June 21st, 2011 in Site News - 167 Comments
ThemeTrust has offered to give a premium WordPress theme to 10 lucky readers of the Vandelay Design blog! The winners will get the theme of their choice plus support.
Ultimate Round Up of Free Photoshop Patterns
Published in Design - 14 Comments
Photoshop users can save a lot of time and create beautiful designs by using patterns. Photoshop’s presets (like brushes, styles, patterns, custom shapes, and gradients) are highly-powerful tools when used effectively.
Whether you are creating your own custom patterns or using pre-made patterns that you have downloaded for free or purchased, having an arsenal of patterns at your disposal will allow you to quickly create high-quality work.
In this post we’ll showcase 50 sets of free Photoshop patterns for your own use. You may also be interested in our recent post, Ultimate Collection of Free Photoshop Styles.
25 Exceptional Blog Designs
Published June 20th, 2011 in Galleries - 16 Comments
Most of us visit several different blogs every day. While the greatest factor in a blog being successful and useful is the content, having a memorable and attractive design can certainly help. With so many blogs using the same or similar themes, a unique design can have a positive impact on first time visitors and can improve the visitor’s experience on the blog.
In this post we’ll showcase 25 blogs with beautiful designs. Hopefully these examples will prove to be useful for your own design inspiration.
10 Ways to Extend Your Blog
Published June 16th, 2011 in Blogging - 14 Comments
There are many different challenges that bloggers face. Continually growing, adapting, and improving your blog is a significant on-going challenge. While all blogs attempt to provide useful content and to connect with readers, sometimes there is a desire and a need to go further. The motivation could be to provide more for readers, to help standout from other blogs in the industry, to bring in more money, or simply for a new learning experience.
In this post we’ll look at 10 different things you can do to extend your blog. Of course, you won’t want to attempt all of them with your blog, but see which ones fit best with your goals and with your audience.
1. Email Newsletters
Blogging and email newsletters have a lot in common. In both cases you’re providing content on a consistent basis to subscribers, and trying to increase your reach by offering content that is interesting and helpful for those reading. It may seem like having an email newsletter is overkill if you’re already blogging, but building a newsletter list can be a great way to extend your blog.
The newsletter will give you another method of staying in touch with your audience and you’ll be able to include content that you want to be accessible only to your subscribers. If you already have the traffic coming to your blog and an established reputation with your audience, building a newsletter list can be much easier than it would be without the blog.
We recently started our own newsletter, and so far it has been a great way for us to reach those who read our blog and want more, and we’re able to include brief announcements, news, and links that we aren’t able to post on our blog each week.
For managing a mailing list we use and recommend MailChimp. It includes all the necessary features (and more) and it’s free for lists with less than 2,000 subscribers. AWeber, Get Response, and iContact are other popular options.
In terms of monetization possibilities, email newsletter present many of the same opportunities as blogs, including selling ad space, promoting affiliate products, and selling your own products.
