35 Amazing Examples of Splatter Effects
Published April 23rd, 2012 in Galleries - 7 Comments
Splatter effects can be used effectively in all types of graphic design. There are a number of Photoshop brush sets and vector sets available for adding splatter effects to your work, or you could create your own custom splatters.
In this post we’ll showcase 35 examples of designs that make use of splatter effects. They should certainly provide some inspiration for ways to use splatters in your own work.
Simple Church WordPress Theme
Published April 20th, 2012 in WordPress Themes - 0 Comments
For churches that are working with limited budgets, free WordPress themes can be an excellent option. Our Simple Church WordPress theme will provide your church with a quality website that includes important functionality to highlight upcoming events and to offer sermon/massage audio files for visitors.
Theme features include:
- Image slider on the homepage that can be customized through the WordPress dashboard
- Media page where visitors can listen to your recent sermons or messages
- Events calendar that displays events in chronological order
- Upload your own logo
25 Photoshop 3D Effects Tutorials
Published in Design, Photoshop Tutorials - 1 Comment
Photoshop allows designers to do a lot of amazing things, including 3D effects. If you’re not familiar with Photoshop’s 3D effects or if you are interested in improving your own skills in this area, we have compiled 25 of the best tutorials that teach and demonstrate how to accomplish different things.
Many of the tutorials focus on 3D text effects, and others show various objects designed in 3D. Whatever you are looking to design, you should be able to find a tutorial here that will show the steps needed.
Free Set of Photography Icons
Published April 19th, 2012 in Free Resources, Icons - 7 Comments
Our friends at Iconshock have designed a beautiful set of photography icons for you, the readers of the Vandelay Design blog! The set includes 10 high-quality icons that are perfect for use in photography-related web projects. Each icon comes in .png format (256 px x 256 px).
25 Free and Premium jQuery Menu Scripts
Published April 18th, 2012 in Web Development - 3 Comments
If you are designing or developing websites chances are you are going to be using jQuery on many of your projects. Navigation menus are just one of the elements of a website that can be enhanced by jQuery, and there are a number of ready-made scripts that can be implemented into your work very quickly.
While you always have the option of coding a jQuery menu from scratch, sometimes there is a script already available that will help you to accomplish exactly what you need in a fraction of the time it would take to code from scratch.
In this post we’ll link to 25 different jQuery scripts that can be used in your own work. Some are free and some will cost a few dollars. (the free ones are listed first).
Free jQuery Menu Scripts:
Rocking and Rolling Rounded Menu with jQuery
25 Websites with Outstanding Illustrations
Published April 17th, 2012 in Galleries - 5 Comments
Quality illustrations can make a web design memorable, interesting, and fun. Character illustrations and nature-inspired illustrations are especially popular in web design right now. In this post we’ll showcase 25 examples for your own inspiration.
As you will see from the selection of sites below, there are plenty of different ways to use illustration in web design. Most of the designs shown here are colorful and inviting to visitors.
25 Beautiful Flower Photographs
Published April 16th, 2012 in Galleries - 1 Comment
It’s that time of year where the weather has warmed up and flowers are blooming. For photographers flowers can be an excellent subject, and for designers they can provide plenty of inspiration. One of my favorite ways to use photos of flowers is for developing a color scheme. It’s simple to use a photo of flowers to identify great colors to use in your own designs.
Here are 25 photos for your inspiration.
Photo credit: Rosemary
5 Important Email Templates for Freelance Designers
Published April 12th, 2012 in Business - 7 Comments
Freelance designers have a lot of different responsibilities when it comes to running a business and providing client services. Anything that you can do to increase efficiency in administrative areas will help to allow you to spend more of your time actually designing for clients.
Email is an essential communications tool, but for freelancers it often becomes overwhelming. One effective way to increase efficiency with email is to have a set of templates that can be used for common situations. Of course, you’ll want to edit the templates to fit the specific needs of each situation, but if your templates are drafted carefully they should not need extensive editing or customization.
In this article we’ll take a look at 5 specific types of templates that you may want to have on hand in order to save yourself some time. Email templates can also help to improve communications with clients, ensuring that you don’t overlook certain things and allowing you to respond faster.
1. Proposal Follow Up Email
After you submit a proposal to a potential client, if you haven’t received a response in a few days (the amount of time will probably vary from one project/client to the next) you’ll probably want to follow up.
In some cases you may even want to send the follow up right after the proposal just to say thanks for the opportunity. This is more typical in a situation where the proposal is presented in person or over the phone, rather than in an email.
The purpose of the proposal follow up is simply to thank the potential client for considering you, and to prompt them towards choosing you for the project. You’ll probably want to mention your interest in working on the project and your confidence that you can do a great job for the client.
25 Tutorials for Learning Character Design
Published April 11th, 2012 in Design, Photoshop Tutorials - 6 Comments
If you would like to be able to design awesome characters that could be as mascots or in illustrations, this post is for you. There are a lot of excellent tutorials out there that show how to design characters. In this post we’ll link to 25 character design tutorials. Some of the tutorials use Illustrator and others use Photoshop. Whatever your preference, you’ll be able to pick up some new skills and techniques from these tutorials.
Create a Cool Vector Panda Character in Illustrator
25 Type-Based Logos for Inspiration
Published April 10th, 2012 in Galleries - 6 Comments
Some of the most effective logos use text and typography as the primary design element. These types of logos, when done effectively, can be excellent for branding and building name recognition. In addition, type-based logos typically work very well when printed as opposed to being designed primarily for the screen.
In this post we’ll showcase 25 examples of type-based logos. To see more about the logo or to see more work from the designer please click on the links to be led to the source.
