Announcing the Launch of Vandelay Premier, Exclusive Resources for Designers

Through this blog we have always been committed to providing our readers with fresh, helpful, and inspiring content. Today we are excited to announce that Vandelay Design is extending beyond the blog and is now bring high-quality resources to web and graphic designers! We’ve launched Vandelay Premier, which is a membership-based community, in effort to provide designers with resources to make their lives easier, their work more effective, and their business and careers more successful.

There are a lot of marketplaces, membership-based communities, and stock sites where designers can purchase resources. We see value in this variety, and we think Vandelay Premier is different from the others in a few key ways:

• Career resources in addition to design resources. In effort to help our members achieve greater levels of success in their careers as designers, we provide informational resources (like interviews, short e-books, and special reports) that cover various topics relevant to designers and freelancers.
• Extended license. Our design resources come with an extend license that allows mutiple uses on personal and commercial projects, including use in themes, templates, and other resources that will be distributed in mass. Extended licenses can get very costly with most resources, but with Vandelay Premier there is no additional fee.
• Marketplace with exclusive discounts. We have partnered with a number of companies that provide products and services for designers, and we’ve negotiated discounted rates for our members. More info on these partner companies in a minute.
• Low price. Members get unlimited access to our design resources, career resources, and marketplace for just $9 per month. Or if you would like to save a little bit of money there is an option of $79 annually. You can sign up here.

A Sample of the Design Resources Already Available

We’ve launched the site with more than 40 resources available for download, so it’s already a great deal! There are already almost 300 textures on the site, up to 4000 px by 3000 px in resolution. New resources will be added regularly, so the value of the membership should be constantly increasing. If you’d like to stay up to date with the additions to the site you can subscribe to the RSS feed or follow us on Twitter. Here are just some of the resources that are already available (click on the links to see more details).

One-Page Portfolio Template

The highly-talented Soh Tananka designed and coded a one-page portfolio template that is great for showing off your work.

Highly-Detailed Filigree Vectors

Chadlonius designed this beautiful set of filigree vectors.

Hand Drawn Floral Vectors

Sebastiano Guerriero of WeGraphics designed these vectors that are great for giving your work a hand-drawn effect.

General Website Icons

This set of icons includes many of those iconcs that you need all the time in web design. It was created by Andy Gongea of Graphic Rating.

Laptop PSD

Mohammad Jeprie of Desain Digital has created a few PSD files for us, including this one of a laptop.

Old Paper Textures

Caleb Kimbrough of Lost and Taken has done a few texture packs for our members, including this one of old paper.

Brown Paper Textures

This set provides one of the staples that every designer needs, brown paper textures.

Urban Textures

Caleb Kimbrough’s urban textures are great for adding grunge effects to your design.

Rusty Dumpsters Textures

Very high res textures that make something positive out of old dumpsters.

Grunge Bricks Textures

This set adds a grunge twist to the popular brick texture.

Stone Wall Texture

A high res set of textures from a nice stone wall.

Leaves Textures

Caleb Kimbrough has contibuted two sets of leaves textures that are great for nature-inspired design.

Bokeh Textures/Backgrounds

There are two sets of bokeh textures in a wide variety of colors.

Watercolor Textures

Sebastiano Guerriero created this set of beautiful watercolor textures.

Acrylic Brushes

A set of 18 high res Photoshop brushes, with more on the way.

Brush Strokes Brushes

There are already 2 sets of brushes in this series.

Career Resources

How to Use a Blog to Market Your Design Business

Over the past 3 years this blog has proven to be the most valuable asset to Vandelay Design, and this short e-book (40+ pages) looks at the topic of how designers can use their blog as a promotion tool to improve their business or their career.

Selling Stock Graphics: An Interview with Ryan Putnam

Selling stock is a great supplement or alternative to client work. Ryan Putnam of Rype Arts has sold a lot of stock illustrations and icons over the past few years and in this interview he shares from that wealth of knowledge and experience.

Using Twitter to Market Yourself: An Interview with Andy Sowards

Twitter has proven to be a very productive resource for many designers, and Andy Sowards is one of the best examples of the impact that Twitter can have on a career. In this interview he shares his tips and insight to help other designers achieve success with Twitter.

If you want to get access to all of these items and more you can sign up for just $9 per month or $79 per year.

Marketplace: Exclusive Discounts for Members

Here is a list of the current deals that are available to our members. They will change from time-to-time and more will be added.

• Site5 – 25% off shared or re-seller hosting, or 10% off shared cloud hosting.
• StudioPress – 25% off any theme.
• Pro Theme Design – 15% off any theme.
• UpThemes – 80% off the first month of a standard or developer club membership.
• ThemeJam – 10% off any theme.
• Shopify – 20% off any hosted e-commerce plan.
• Surreal CMS – $50 off the first year of an annual Pro account.
• Ronin – 20% off a team plan.
• Snobby Slice – $30 off coding services.
• Code My Concept – 20% off coding services.
• Jumpeye Components – 20% off any product.
• Pixmac – An extra 15% on any purchase of credits.
• MOO – 15% off printing services for new customers.

Sample Pack of Resources:

We’ve put together a small sample pack of a few resources that will give you an idea of the quality of resources available. You can download the sample pack for free and visit Vandelay Premier to see everything that is available to members.

Want to Design for Us?

We are looking for talented freelance designers to join our team to create resources for members. Ideally we would like to find designers who are interested in working together on a long-term basis, but one-time projects are ok too. We’re interested in help with creating resources like:

• Vectors
• Icons
• Brushes
• PSDs and design elements

If you would like to pursue the possibility or working together, please email us at info@vandelaydesign.com. Please provide a link to some work samples, preferrably the types of items that you would like to design for us. Due to the amount of inquiries that we have been receiving we will not be able to respond to everyone, but we will do our best.

Thank You!

The first 3 years of the Vandelay Design Blog have been a lot of fun and a great learning experience. Thank you very much for reading our blog and for making it possible to extend our business in this way. Without our readers the posts would have ended a few years ago and none of this would be possible. Thank you!

Published August 1st, 2010 by Steven Snell