Published July 15th, 2009 in Marketing
Being a freelance designer brings great opportunities for creating a working environment that matches your particular lifestyle, but without enough clients to support the business it will be an unsuccessful venture. Many freelancers go into business because of their technical skills and a desire to bring great end results to clients, but marketing is usually not given much consideration until it becomes a necessity.
Because there are so many designers out there competing for work, knowing how you plan to market yourself is critical. Some freelancers who have had a few years to establish their businesses are fortunate enough to generate most of their work through word-of-mouth marketing, but this is the exception, not the rule.
Published July 13th, 2009 in Galleries
Creating an attractive and unique blog design can often be a challenge because so many of them tend to look the same. To help spark you imagination, here is a look at 40 well-designed blogs, in a wide variety of different styles. These sample blogs have been selected from our blog design gallery, Blog Design Heroes. So if you like being inspired, be sure to follow Blog Design Heroes.
By Marina
Published July 7th, 2009 in Reviews
UPrinting has offered to give away 5 prizes of 1,000 business cards to readers of the Vandelay Design blog! If you’re not familiar with UPrinting, they have been a printing leader for over 25 years and they offer a very wide variety of quality printing services, including business cards, brochures, calendars, menus, posters, postcards, envelopes, and more.UPrinting offers convenient ordering for business cards. Their site includes a pricing calculator that allows you to choose all of the size, stock, color, and quantity so you can see the price before even getting started. Shipping costs can also be calculated.
Published July 6th, 2009 in Galleries
Collections of well-designed websites with a minimal approach have always drawn a great response from our readers, so we’ll continue the series with the 6th showcase post of this kind.
Due to the large percentage of our readers that are interested in minimal designs, last month we launched a gallery site, Minimal Exhibit, that focuses on these types of sites. Many of the sites featured in this post have also been featured at Minimal Exhibit, so if you like what you see here, be sure to follow Minimal Exhibit where many new sites are added each week.
(mt) Ventures
Published June 30th, 2009 in Galleries
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
Published June 24th, 2009 in Design
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
Published June 22nd, 2009 in Galleries
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
Published June 18th, 2009 in Galleries
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
Published June 15th, 2009 in Galleries
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.
Joshua Sterns
Published June 10th, 2009 in Reviews
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.
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