Limited Time: Web Designer’s Bundle – $259 of Premium Resources for Just $29
Published October 20th, 2011 in Site News - 10 Comments
For the next 10 days we’re running a promo on an exiting bundle of products from Vandelay Premier. The Web Designer’s Bundle is a collection of our premium resources that are extremely useful for your own web design work. The bundle includes 59 sets of resources like icons, vectors, Photoshop brushes, patterns, buttons, PSD files and other design elements.
The total cost of these resources if purchased individually would be $259, but for the next 10 days they can be purchased for just $29! The resources in the bundle come with our standard license, which allows for use on commercial projects and even in items like templates and themes that will be distributed.
25 Creative Navigation Menus
Published October 19th, 2011 in Galleries - 13 Comments
Navigation menus are an integral part of any website, and a critical element in usability. Menus also frequently play a strong role in the visual design and layout of the site. Although there are some standard types of navigation menus that are typically used, some websites display creativity in their design of the menu. In this post we’ll take a look at 25 examples.
When designing navigation menus keep in mind that creativity should not overpower usability. If visitors can’t figure out how to use the menu it doesn’t serve it’s most important purpose.
Comment to Win 500 Full-Color Business Cards from Next Day Flyers!
Published October 18th, 2011 in Site News - 109 Comments
Next Day Flyers has offered to give 500 full-color business cards each to 3 lucky readers of the Vandelay Design Blog! If you’ve been wanting to get your own stylish business cards printed, this could be your opportunity.
Showcase of Long Exposure Photography
Published October 17th, 2011 in Galleries - 10 Comments
Long exposure photography can create interesting and inspiring effects. With a slow shutter speed more light is absorbed, which is often helpful for night photography. Moving objects and light create some amazing images, as you will see in this showcase of 25 photos taken by various photographers. While it is not easy, long exposure photography can be fun to practice. To see a larger version of any of the photos please click on the image and you will be led to the source.
Photo credit: Jakob Wagner
5 Tips for Overcoming Blogging Plateaus
Published October 13th, 2011 in Blogging - 14 Comments
Anyone who has maintained a blog for even a few months or more knows that there are frustrating times in the life of a blogger where growth seems to come to a complete standstill. The nature of blogging involves adding new content to the site and continually picking up new readers through that content. However, there are times when common measurements like visitors, pageviews, subscribers, and even income are extremely difficult to improve upon.
These blogging plateaus typically lead to frustration. In this post we’ll look at some things that you can do when you’re on one of those plateaus to help make that push and get things moving forward again.
1. Focus on Actions Instead of Results
A lot of bloggers incorporate goals into their daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly routines. Goals can be highly effective because most bloggers are working on their own, and there’s no boss or anyone else to keep them motivated. In this type of situation, goals can help by encouraging the blogger despite that lack of accountability to others.
Typical goals for a blogger might include:
-
Draw X,000 visitors in a month
-
Attract X,000 search engine visitors in a month
-
Make $X,000 in a month
While these goals can serve as motivation they don’t show you what you need to do in order to achieve them. If you’ve hit a plateau one of the best things you can do is forget about statistics and results and focus instead on actions. Actions will be more relevant to you in this situation because if you set up good action goals they can show you exactly what you need to do in order to get better results, removing the mystery of where to focus your efforts.
For example, here is a set of action goals that you could use:
-
Create a list of 100 possible post topics, and then chose the top 10 ideas.
-
Write and publish 2 news posts each week.
-
Write guest posts for 2 different blogs in the niche.
-
Introduce yourself to 10 other bloggers in the niche.
-
Submit 1 post per week to 5 different social media sites.
While it may be things like number of visitors and number of subscribers that you are having trouble improving, by focusing on these specific actions you’re likely to improve your blog, which will result in better numbers that help to get you off of that plateau.
70 Dual Monitor Wallpapers
Published October 12th, 2011 in Galleries - 18 Comments
When you spend a lot of time in front of your monitor, like web designers do, it’s nice to have wallpaper that will provide some inspiration. Since many people use two screens in their workspace we decided to put together this collection of dual monitor wallpapers. Each has a large resolution that is intended to display well on dual screen setups. If you see something that you would like to download, please click on the image and you will be led to the source.
The wallpapers shown here come from two great sources where you can find even more by browsing on your own. They are InterfaceLift and deviantART. At InterfaceLift you can browse by resolution, and they even have a section for 3-screen wallpapers.
35 Photoshop Tutorials for Website Layouts
Published October 11th, 2011 in Design - 6 Comments
Most web designers use to create the visual design before moving on to coding the website. There is an excellent selection of tutorials available that show the process of designing sites/pages in Photoshop, and if you are looking to learn more or improve your skills in this area, these tutorials can be very helpful. In this post we’ll link to 35 quality tutorials for creating layouts in Photoshop.
You may also be interested in this post from our archives: 35 Tutorials for Creating Website Layouts in Photoshop.
Design a Textured Outdoors Website in Photoshop
Design Inspiration: Yellow Websites
Published October 10th, 2011 in Galleries - 8 Comments
Continuing our recent series of posts on color inspiration for web designers, today we look at yellow websites. Yellow may not be the first color that comes to mind for a website background or for a primary role in your color scheme, but as the sites featured here will show, it can help to produce interesting and vibrant websites. You will notice in this showcase that many of the sites are using black or dark gray with yellow.
Hopefully this collection will give you some ideas about using yellow in your own work.
30 Free Serif Fonts to Download
Published October 6th, 2011 in Design - 11 Comments
Having an arsenal of quality fonts is essential for web and graphic designers. In this post we’ll feature 30 serif fonts that are free to download. Browse through the fonts that are featured and when you see something that you would like to use, click on the links to be led to the source where the font can be downloaded. As always when you are using freebies, be sure to check the terms and conditions to verify on what types of projects it can be used.
Free Set of Web Designer’s Icons
Published October 5th, 2011 in Design - 9 Comments
Our friends at IconShock and WordPressThemeShock have designed a beautiful set of 10 icons especially for our blog readers. The icons can be download for free from Vandelay Premier. Please visit this page and use the promo code “iconshock” to get the icons for free. Each icon comes in PNG format, plus the original source Illustrator files are included.
