Archive for the “Vandelay Design” Category

Our friends at Jumpeye Components have offered to give five readers of the Vandelay Design Blog a free license to SlideShowBox Premium HTML!

Creative designers can do some amazing things with jQuery. A wide variety of animation effects are possible, and these 35 tutorials provide excellent learning resources for anyone who is wanting to brush up their skills in this area. You’ll find tutorials for creative animated navigation menus, as well as for other types of animation that use jQuery instead of Flash.

Animate Image Filling Up Using jQuery

Having the right fonts is critical to successful web and graphic design. Fortunately, there are a lot of quality free fonts that are available for use. In this post we’ll feature 25 of the best calligraphy fonts for download. Be sure to check the restrictions of any font before using on a commercial project.

Champignon

Paper textures are extremely useful and versatile in web and graphic design. Whether it is brown paper, notebook paper, wrinkled paper, or something else, they are frequently used by designers. In this post we’ll feature some of the best free paper textures. Always be sure to check the license and terms before using.

For more textures please see:

• 35 High-Quality and Free Concrete Textures
• 45 Free Wood Textures

Throughout the existence of this blog our readers have appreciated posts on minimalism more than just about any other topic. Here we will continue our series of showcasing exceptional examples of minimalism in web design.

Clean, Simple, Clear

concrete5, an up-and-coming open-source content management system, has offered to give a lucky blog reader an eCommerce and discussion forums license package! The total value of these two licenses is $145.

Concrete textures are great for adding some character to your web and graphic design projects. In this post we’ll feature 35 concrete textures from various sources. If you see something you like, click on the image and you will be led to the source. Be sure to read the license or terms of use, especially if you are planning to use it for a commercial project.

Most web designers rely on inquiries from their portfolio website to produce a decent portion of their business. Contact forms can be very simple, collecting a name and contact information, or they can be much more detailed, providing enough information to get an estimate. While the primary purpose of the contact form on our website has always been to make it easy for potential clients to contact us about web design projects, there are also a number of other reasons that visitors use the contact form and a one-size-fits-all approach has its drawbacks. We recently changed the contact form to include some conditional fields that make the form more customized according to the reason the visitor is contacting us, and in this post we’ll go through the process of creating this type of form.

The form we’ll be creating will contain some basic fields (name, email, phone, website, and message) that are shown to all visitors who are filling out the form, but based on the reason they are contacting us they will also see a few other more specific fields. If the visitor selects “Web Design Services” as their reason for contacting us they will be prompted to tell us if it is a new website or a re-design, enter a budget, and tell us how they found us. If they select “Content Development Services” they will also be prompted to enter a budget, but with different options than the budget for web design services, and so on.

In the past our contact form has included a field to allow visitors to select a budget, but that was based on the assumption that they were contacting us regarding web design services. Since the budget field isn’t applicable for someone who is filling out the contact form just to say hi, this “advanced” form will only show what is relevant based on user input.

Design inspiration can come from just about anywhere. In this post we’ll feature examples of graffiti art that can serve as inspiration. Here you’ll find 30 pieces of graffiti art that display text effects, character illustrations, beautiful color schemes, and more.

jQuery sliders and image galleries have continued to grow in popularity for use on homepages or on portfolio pages. Last year we published 25 jQuery Image Gallery/Slider Tutorials and Plugins, but a number of high-quality tutorials and plugins have been released since then, so it’s time for a follow-up post. Here you’ll find another 25 jQuery sliders (13 tutorials and 12 plugins) to help you in your own work.

jQuery Slider Tutorials:

A Beautiful Apple-Style Slideshow Gallery with CSS & jQuery

Being a freelance web designer is an appealing job for many people. There are perks like a flexible schedule and the ability to work from home that encourage people to move towards a career as a freelancer. Unfortunately, many people do not consider everything that is involved in being a successful freelancer and all of the challenges that come with being in such a crowded marketplace. In this post we’ll examine 13 keys to achieving success as a freelancer. These are all areas for would-be freelancers to consider before making the jump, and potential areas of improvement for existing freelancers.

Being successful as a freelancer requires you to be rather well rounded, as you will notice from the diversity of the keys on this list. Fortunately, you don’t need to be an expert in all of these areas, but you do need to consider them and recognize their impact on your work. You’ll be able to develop your skills in theses areas with time and effort.

1. Discipline and Commitment

Working as a freelancer or an independent designer is much different than working as an employee for a design studio or as an in-house designer. As a freelancer there will be no one to hold you accountable, no one to tell you what you should be working on at any given time, no one to set your hours, and no one to hand work to you. Everything is on you.

While there are significant benefits to working on your own and being in control, there is also great responsibility. In order to achieve any type of lasting success as a freelancer you will need be disciplined with your work and time and committed to your own success. Some people are naturally driven and well-suited for working as a freelancer, and others tend to have more stability and less risk.

Freelancing can be many things to different people (see Is Freelancing Right for You?), but if you are hoping to make it a long-term career choice, don’t jump into freelancing before considering the discipline and commitment that will be required. For most freelancers, the first few months and years are the most difficult, and as you become more established it should become a bit more natural and easier. However, making it to that stage will require a great deal of work.

Designers love creative business cards, and they can have a big impact on potential clients as well. One way to have an impressive card is to use both sides for a purpose. In this post we’ll showcase more than 20 examples of beautiful double-sided business cards.

Model Republic

Typography is a critical aspect of web and graphic design, but finding the right font can often be a challenge. If you’re looking for a quality thin or light font, this post should be an excellent resource for you. Here you’ll find 25 free thin fonts. As always when dealing with freebies, be sure to check the license before using it in your own work.

District Thin

The use of textures can be an easy way to add character to a design. Wood textures are particularly common in web design, and in this post we’ll featuring 45 free wood textures. If you’re looking for a texture to use in your own work hopefully this will be helpful. As always when you are dealing with freebies, be sure to read the license before using it.

Many clients ask their web designers to optimize their website to increase visibility with search engines and to attract more visitors. Some designers and agencies offer specific SEO (search engine optimization) services and others want nothing to do with SEO. Most clients that ask for a search engine optimized website understand very little about what is involved in SEO and what it takes to achieve top rankings for competitive keywords.

Because web design and SEO are closely related, it’s a topic that designers are frequently asked about, but there is often a lot of gray area about what is the responsibility of the designer and what is within the designer’s power. While many clients want the designer to create a website that ranks well and attracts targeted visitors, SEO is really an ongoing process that involves much more than the design and coding of the site. Things like keyword research, content development, and link building are also critical aspects of optimizing a website for search engines, and typically these are all ongoing processes.

Although SEO involves much more than just design, there is still a lot that the designer can do to set the foundation for an optimized website. If the designer creates a search engine-friendly site any future and ongoing SEO efforts will have a greater impact. In my opinion, web design and SEO are separate services, and a designer cannot create a truly optimized website without other pieces to the puzzle. The designer should create a search-friendly site and educate clients on what else will need to be done (such as content development and link building) in order to effectively optimize the site for searches.

In this post we’ll take a detailed look at the subject of web designers and SEO and many of the issues that are involved.

In the current economy there are a lot of designers and developers looking for work, whether it is full-time employment, contract work, or freelance opportunities. Fortunately, there are a number of great places to find these types of positions. In this post we’ll look at 40 sites that include specialized job boards that include web/graphic design and web development opportunities.

Best Places to Find Web/Graphic Design Jobs:

Authentic Jobs
A very active job board used by a lot of recognized and respected agencies. Includes freelance and full-time opportunities.

WeGraphics, a provider of premium design resources, has offered to give a free 3-month membership to five readers of the Vandelay Design Blog! Membership to WeGraphics will give you access to a variety of high-quality textures, Photoshop brushes, vectors and icons. In addition, you’ll also have access to files used in the tutorials published on the WeGraphics blog.

Adobe Fireworks often gets overshadowed by Photoshop, but it too can be an excellent tool for designers. If you’re not experienced with Fireworks you may want to browse through some online tutorials to get a feel for the program. In this post we’ll feature 35 of the best tutorials for Fireworks.

How to Create a Stylish Navigation Bar in Adobe Fireworks

Deciding on a color scheme can often be one of the most difficult parts of the web design process. There are a lot of different approaches that you can take with a color scheme, and in this post we’ll be showcasing 30 sites that feature vibrant color schemes.

Visual Recipes

Packaging design can make a profound difference on the sales of a product and how it is viewed by customers. In this post we’ll provide a showcase excellent package designs for your own inspiration. Web designers often need to turn to offline source of inspiration rather than only seeking inspiration from other web designs.

You may also be interested in:

• Design Inspiration: Splatter Effects
• Showcase of “Green” Typography
• Design Inspiration: Lighting Effects – Part III

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