Vandelay Design Blog

Win Free Business Cards from UPrinting

Vandelay Design — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:48:51 +0000

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.

To avoid bad prints, UPrinting offers a free file review option before any payment has been made. They will review your file for technical errors that could cause potential problems with the printing.

Giveaway Details:

Five readers of the blog will win 1,000 business cards each, plus free ground shipping (only to residents of the US and Canada due to international shipping costs) courtesy of UPrinting.

To enter the contest, please leave a comment on this post stating that you would like to enter, or tell us how you would use the business cards if you win. On Friday, July 10 I will select five random winners and this post will be updated at that time. The winners will be contacted by email (be sure to leave a valid email address with your comment).

Good luck!

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35 Beautiful Minimal Websites - Part 6

Vandelay Design — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:45:47 +0000

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.

I Wear Your Shirt

Designme

Ole Martin Kristiansen

Anthony James Bruno

Design Newz

Turn This Thing Off!

Odd Web Things

More more minimalistic design inspiration, please see:

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25 Websites with Creative and Unique Layouts

Vandelay Design — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:34:16 +0000

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.

Missscha’s Photogallery

Jan Sochor Photography

DJ Yura

X Producciones Graficas

Get London Reading

McCormick Creative

Tangled Decals

The Amazing Idea Machine

For more design inspiration, please see:

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25 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating 3D Text Effects

Vandelay Design — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:43:38 +0000

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

Create a 3D Text Scene Using Photoshop

Photoshop Tutorial: Stunning 3D Effect in 30 Minutes

3D Text on Fire

3D Text Effects

Design Soft Stylized 3D Type

Kaboom! Exploding Text

Valentines Day - Photoshop Style

Glowing and Sparkling Intense Light 3D Logo

Stunning Neon Light 3D Typography

Create a Spectacular Grass Text Effect in Photoshop

Creating a Spectacular Flaming Meteor Effect on Text

Create a Spectacular Style Text Effect

Hell of Tutorial in Photoshop

Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography

Papercraft Text Effect

Create a 3D Flowery Text Effect

How to Create a Realistic 3D Stone Text Effect

Create 3D Text with Some Extreme Lighting

3D Text Effect in Photoshop (video)

Transformers Effect

Create a Colorful 3D Text Explosion

3D Text Effect

How to Create High Quality Metal 3D Text in Photoshop

How to Quickly Create a Stylish Retro Text Effect

For more Photoshop tutorials, please see:

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35+ Horizontal Websites for Your Design Inspiration

Vandelay Design — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:39:17 +0000

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

Sonido

Eric Ryan Anderson

Tyler Thompson Blog

The Horizontal Way

Alex Flueras Photography

C’N'C Costume National Blog

Publicidade Viva

The Box Doodle Project

Jan Sochor Photography

Synthetic Infatuation

F Claire Baxter

180 Degrees

Eolo Perfido Photography

Paolo Boccardi Photography

Resources/Tutorials:

Useful Tips to Design Horizontal Website Layout - Woork

How to Create a Horizontally Scrolling Site - CSS Tricks

What’s Your Opinion of Horizontal Websites?

Do you like of dislike websites with horizontal scrolling? Personally, I don’t really like horizontal scrolling as a visitor, but I do like the fact that many of these sites show some creativity in layout.

For more design inspiration, please see:

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Premium Theme and Template Options for Real Estate Websites

Vandelay Design — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:35:42 +0000

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

WP Pro Real Estate - $25 at ThemeForest

Real Estate Theme - $35 at ThemeForest

de Casa - 39€ at ThemeShift

iReal Estate - $79.95 at Real Estate Themes

Open House Real Estate - $79.95 at Gorilla Themes

The Bel Air - $79.95 at Gorilla Themes

Smooth Real Estate - $79.95 at Gorilla Themes

Sofa Real Estate - $25 at ThemeForest

HTML/CSS Templates:

A few of these are static versions of premium WordPress themes featured above. They are available both ways.

Pro Real Estate - $10 at ThemeForest

Real Estate HTML Template - $15 at ThemeForest

Premium Real Estate - $15 at ThemeForest

Real Estate Web Template - $12 at ThemeForest

Real Estate Template - $65 at TemplateMonster (includes both Flash and non-Flash versions)

Real Estate Template - $64 at TemplateMonster

Real Estate Template - $64 at TemplateMonster (includes both Flash and non-Flash versions)

Real Estate Template - Dream Template - Memberships start at $59.95 per year

Real Estate Template - $35 at Template Kingdom

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25 of the Best Photographer Portfolio Websites - Part Two

Vandelay Design — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:24:50 +0000

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.

C & J Willis Photography

Carlos Alonso Bodas

Meg Perotti

CirilJazbec

Jan Sochor Photography

Charlatan Messiah

Mark Lobo Photography

Scott Lawler Photography

Raven Photography

Kenn Reay

James Day Photography

Jesus Vilamajo

If you enjoy getting inspiration from excellent portfolio sites, you’ll love our new gallery site Folio Focus, which showcases the best portfolio sites.

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Win a Free License for Fanurio Time Tracking and Invoicing Software

Vandelay Design — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:36:07 +0000

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.

If you’re not familiar with Fanurio, it is a software application that provides freelancers with a number of features for tracking time, invoicing, and tracking the status of those invoices. Invoice templates are available, even as part of the free trial. In addition, Fanurio includes a reporting system that will help you to analyze your use of time and how it impacts your income. For more information on the features see Fanurio’s Features Overview.

There are many options for invoicing and time tracking, and most are web-based solutions that involve a monthly fee. Fanurio is cross-platform software that comes with a one-time charge of $59 to purchase the license with no on-going monthly fees.

The Giveaway Details:

If you would like to win one of these five licenses, please leave a comment on this post to express your interest. On Saturday, June 13th I will use a random number generator to select five random winners. At that time I will update this post to announce the winners, and I’ll contact them via email (please leave a valid email with your comment so you can be contacted if you win).

If you aren’t one of the lucky five winners, you can always download a free trial of Fanurio to see how you like it.

Good luck!

UPDATE: The contest is now over. Thanks to everyone who participated. Here are the winners:

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Gallery of 3D Elements in Web Design

Vandelay Design — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:37:24 +0000

If you pay attention to web trends you have probably noticed that a growing number of sites are using designs that give the appearance of three dimensions. 3D design elements can help to make the design look more unique, as well as to highlight something in particular by drawing the visitor’s attention. In this post you’ll see 25 websites that use some type of 3D element in the design.

The Saturn Project

Eurosong

Carl Cartee

Canadian Friends of the Israel Museum

For more design inspiration, please see:

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Announcing the Launch of 5 Niche Galleries

Vandelay Design — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:49:09 +0000

Today I’m happy to announce that I have launched a network of five niche gallery sites! Many of us visit design and CSS galleries on a consistent basis for design inspiration, and there is no shortage of galleries to choose from. Some of my favorite galleries are those that exist to showcase work of a specific kind (We Love WP is a good example, it is a showcase of WordPress-powered sites).

Niche galleries are especially useful for designers because they allow you to get the specific type of inspiration that you are looking for without being overwhelmed by too much that doesn’t interest you. You can go to a niche gallery and quickly find helpful and relevant inspiration that applies to your own situation. With that in mind, I have chosen five topics for galleries that I thought would be of use to many designers.

If you have any interest in some of these types of design, please check out what has been posted already and subscribe to the feed or follow on Twitter. Each gallery has been launched with more than 30 showcased items and they will be updated consistently (The amount of new additions will depend partly on how many quality submissions are received, so please feel free to submit your work for consideration. Ideally, there will be about 10 additions each week per gallery).

Minimal Exhibit

Some of the most popular posts that have ever been published on the Vandelay Design blog are the collections of websites with a minimalist design style. Minimal Exhibit is a niche gallery that showcases only sites with excellent use of minimalism in the design.

Minimal Exhibit RSS Feed | Minimal Exhibit on Twitter

CartFrenzy

Designing an e-commerce website brings its own unique set of challenges. If you’re looking for inspiration for some of the most well-designed e-commerce sites around, CartFrenzy will be an excellent resource.

CartFrenzy RSS Feed | CartFrenzy on Twitter

Folio Focus

A portfolio website is one of the most significant assets of any designer, and these sites are often excellent examples of creative and innovative design. Folio Focus showcases the best portfolio sites of all kinds. You’ll find inspiration from the sites of freelance designers, design firms, photographers and more.

Folio Focus RSS Feed | Folio Focus on Twitter

Blog Design Heroes

Blog Design Heroes is a showcase of the best blog designs. Whether you are designing a blog theme for a client or for yourself, you’ll find tons of inspiration here.

Blog Design Heroes RSS Feed | Blog Design Heroes on Twitter

TypeInspire

For typography lovers, TypeInspire will be constant source of inspiration. The gallery will feature typographic works of all kinds, including websites with exemplary use of typography, poster design (from sites like deviantART and Behance), other forms of graphic design, and anything else that is appropriate.

TypeInspire RSS Feed | TypeInspire on Twitter

How You Can Get Involved

Each of the five galleries has a submission form that will allow you to submit your own work, or that of others, for consideration. I would love to have your participation in this way as the success and usefullness of these galleries will ultimately depend on the community of users that develop around them. Also, feel free to leave comments on any of the posts. I’m greatly appreciative of the readers that have made Vandelay Design and DesignM.ag successful and fun to work on, and I hope that some of you will also benefit from the inspiration that is available at these new galleries.

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