Communicating with Indecisive Clients
Published August 6th, 2008 in Design - 11 Comments
Web designers will get to work with all different types of clients. While that’s one of the nice things that keeps the job from getting too monotonous, we also have to be able to communicate effectively with people who are coming from a variety of circumstances.
Some clients will know exactly what they want and they’ll communicate it to you clear and up front. Others will struggle to give much input on your ideas and they may have difficulty making certain decisions about the direction of the project. From my experience this is much more common among clients who just don’t have much knowledge of web design or how websites need to function. If you’re dealing heavily with small businesses this could be a big portion of you clientele.
25 Examples of Creative Navigation
Published August 4th, 2008 in Galleries - 98 Comments
In addition to being one of the most significant influences on the usability of a site, navigation menus also allow designers an opportunity to get creative and add some interesting and attractive visual elements to a site. Of course, in some cases the creativity can hinder the usability of the site, but in many cases appearance and functionality can work together.
I have compiled a collection of 25 sites that use navigation more creatively than just the standard menu. These sites have been chosen based upon their appearance and there may be some that are not up to par on usability. The idea is to get your creativity flowing, but remember the importance of usability and accessibility when creating your own navigation.
10 Excellent Sources for WordPress Design Inspiration
Published August 3rd, 2008 in WordPress - 54 Comments
CSS galleries and collections of inspirational designs are nothing new to designers, but sometimes you may be looking specifically for examples of great WordPress themes. Whether you’re working on a theme to distribute to others or if you’re building a custom theme for your own site, it can sometimes help to look at examples of what others have been able to do with WordPress
We Love WP
The best, most up-to-date gallery for WordPress sites and blogs. We Love WP has been around for over a year and they have a ton of designs for your inspiration (in June they passed 1,000). And of course, you can also subscribe to their feed.
Win a Free Premium Theme Courtesy of WooThemes
Published July 31st, 2008 in Competition - 67 Comments
Chances are you’ve heard about WooThemes in the past few weeks or seen their advertisements on design-related sites and blogs that you visit. Well, here is your chance to grab one of their high-quality premium themes for free. They have kindly offered to give away a free theme to one of our readers.
Here’s how it’s going to work. If you would like to get your hands on a single-user license to your choice of three popular themes (ProudFolio, Vibrant CMS, or Fresh News) leave a comment on this post stating why you would like to win the theme or what you would do with it (please, something more than “I want it.”). On Sunday (August 3rd) I’ll use Random.org to choose a random comment number as the winner. Please leave a valid email address where you can be reached so I can get in touch with you if you win.
Best of July, 2008: This Month in Web Design
Published July 29th, 2008 in Links - 11 Comments
Since July is winding down, here is a quick recap of some of the best blog posts of the month. As always, there’s plenty of reading to keep you busy/distracted.
Web Design and Development:
CSS-Styled Lists: 20+Demos, Tutorials, and Best Practices from Noupe.
Designing for WordPress: Complete Series and Downloads from CSS-Tricks.
How to Make a Featured Post Carousel for WordPress from NETTUTS.
Create a Simple, Powerful Product Highlighter with MooTools from NETTUTS.
27 Best Photoshop Web Layout Design Tutorials to Design Decent Layouts from DzineBlog.
11 Powerful Firefox 3 Add-ons That Can Replace Standalone Applications from Jason Bartholme.
The Perfectly Semantic Three Column CSS Layout from Mirificam Press.
15 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating Product Advertisements
Published July 28th, 2008 in Design, Photoshop Tutorials - 66 Comments
The look and message of an advertisement will obviously have a huge impact on the success of the marketing campaign. Here is a list of 15 tutorials that will help you to create more attractive and eye-catching advertisements with Photoshop.
Design a Professional Laptop Advert – PSDFAN
PSDFAN is a new tutorial blog, but there’s already some high-quality work there, including this one.
Is a Magazine Theme Right for You?
Published July 27th, 2008 in Blog Design - 19 Comments
Magazine-style themes, particularly for WordPress are very popular right now. The majority of premium themes for sale are magazine-style, and there are some very good ones. With the rise in availability and popularity of premium themes, magazine themes are also being increasingly common. A magazine theme can be a great option for building a website to utilize WordPress as a CMS rather than just a standard blogging platform.
Enhanced Sidebars with Dynamic Content
Published July 23rd, 2008 in WordPress - 66 Comments
After writing Effective Use of Blog Sidebars a couple of weeks ago I decided to look into the topic of dynamic sidebars. Typically, most blogs will us a standard sidebar for the entire site. WordPress users have a lot of potential functionality that is rarely used in terms of creating various sidebars and displaying them in different situations.
For example, when I was creating the theme for DesignM.ag I needed to have slightly different sidebars according to the category of the post. You can see the differences by looking at a standard blog post, a post in the community news category, and a post in the gallery category. For items in the news category I wanted a brief introductory paragraph with a button to submit news, followed by a list of recently published news items. On posts in the gallery I wanted the same thing, except for the gallery category instead of the news category. Posts in all other categories have a list of categories followed by recent news items. As a result there are three different left sidebars that are shown depending on the category of the post.
Top 10 Sites for Illustrator Tutorials
Published July 22nd, 2008 in Design - 37 Comments
Photoshop gets most of the attention when it comes to tutorials and blog posts, but Illustrator is also an excellent tool for designers. If you’re interested in brushing up your skills, here are my top ten (taking both quality and quantity of tutorials into consideration).
1. VECTORTUTS
Announcing the Launch of DesignM.ag!
Published July 21st, 2008 in Uncategorized - 13 Comments
Today I’m very excited to announce the launch of DesignM.ag! In attempt to provide a useful and resourceful site for the web design community, DesignM.ag includes a blog, a community news section, a design gallery , and a job board will be added soon. If you enjoy and appreciate the posts here at Vandelay Design, I think you will like DesignM.ag as well.
Here are the initial posts that are already published:
Welcome to DesignM.ag
A general first post.
50+ Fonts for Big, Bold Headlines
This is a big list of some excellent fonts that will make your headlines stand out.
11 Steps to a More Stable Freelance Income
Freelancers are always dealing with ups and downs in terms of work levels and income. This article looks at some things you can do to minimize the down times.
Favorite Design-Related Sites of 21 Designers
Since I was starting a new site for the design community I thought it would be fun to get some others involved in one of the initial posts. This provides an interesting look at what some top designers are reading on a regular basis.
