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Vandelay Design Blog
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Web Design and Development Blog
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25 E-Commerce Websites for Your Design Inspiration
The success of an e-commerce website is defined by sales, not by design. However, that doesn't mean that design does not matter. In this post we'll showcase 25 well-designed e-commerce sites from a wide variety of industries. For more on e-commerce sites please see these posts from the archives:
Best Buy
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August in Review: 19 New Resource Packs for Premier Members
On August 1st we launched Vandelay Premier, a membership-based site that provides high-quality design resources and career resources. A lot has happened during our first month of operation, including the release of 19 new resources/packs! This post serves as a monthly roundup to display the new resources that are available for our members, as well as to list the new discounts that are available in the marketplace.
Free Texture Pack:
A few weeks ago we released the first free resource pack from Vandelay Premier. If you are not already a member you can still download this set of 4 textures as a sample of what is available.
Plain Brown Paper Textures
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Tutorial: Create A Fun Ink Splatter Vector
Today we released a set of ink splatter vectors on Vandelay Premier and in this post we will be covering the process of creating these vectors. The process is not very difficult and it should be easy to follow, but it does take some time.
Here is a preview of the final result of this tutorial.
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13 Ways to Challenge Yourself in Your Career as a Web Designer
A career in web design or development requires a constant effort to improve and to stay on top of new technologies and changes within the industry. No matter how much you improve or how many new things you learn there is always something else out there that can make you better at your work and improve your career.
Fortunately, most designers and developers receive challenges on a daily basis in the normal course of their work, especially those who work for a variety of different clients. However, there are times when a designer should focus on learning and improvement outside of these normal activities. Perhaps no project has come up that will provide an opportunity to hone skills in a particular area, or maybe you have something specific in mind that deserves extra attention.
In this article we will look at some of the ways that you can challenge yourself as a designer. This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list, there are certainly countless possibilities in this area, but it is intended to give some ideas to those of you who are interested in trying new things or improving on existing skills.
Some of the most beneficial things that I have done in my career have also been the most uncomfortable. For most of us it is easy to get in the habit of doing things in a familiar way or avoiding projects that push us beyond our comfort zone. There are times, however, when those challenges and discomfort lead to invaluable opportunities that can have a significant impact on our futures.
1. Accept Clients for Freelance Work
If you are currently working for an agency or as an in-house designer, managing some clients of your own on a freelance basis would certainly provide some outstanding learning opportunities. With your own clients you will need to consider things like pricing your work, securing the client, project and time management, financial management, communication with the client, possibly outsourcing some of the work, and meeting deadlines.
Some of these things, like time management, communication and deadlines, are likely already a part of your daily work as an employee, but when you are managing the client and the project on your own they will probably have a different type of significance.
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Effective Tour Pages: Trends and Showcase
I was recently working on the tour page for Vandelay Premier and doing some research on other tour pages to gather inspiration. I decided to put this post together because it is a topic that can have a great deal of impact on the success of a web app or web business.
Looking at the analytics data shortly after launching Vandelay Premier it was obvious that the tour page will have an incredibly significant impact on the success of the site. When visitors arrive at a site that they are not familiar with the tour page is very inviting since it promises to help them get acquainted with the site very quickly. Many sites and apps place a link or a button for the tour in a very prominent location, so it provides a very valuable opportunity to sell.
By looking at the trends and examples of well-designed tour pages you can pick up some ideas for use in your own work. Here we will cover some of the most common trends of tour pages and we'll include a showcase of pages for your own inspiration.
Trends of Tour Pages:
1. Lists of Features and/or Benefits
The most important job of a tour page is to show a visitor why they should care about the site or product, and what it can do for them. Effective tour pages break down the main features, benefits, or selling points in a way that shows visitors how useful it can be to them. The screenshot below shows how Basecamp quickly lists the benefits, and visitors can click on any of them for more information.
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25 Amazing CSS3 Experimentations and Demos
CSS3 is opening up a lot of possibilities for designers and developers. Things that used to require images, JavaScript or Flash can now be done with the power of CSS. Unfortunately, in most cases these developments are more useful for experimentation and learning at this point since they are not supported by all of the major browsers. However, if you're interested in learning more about the capabilities of CSS3 it can be a valuable use of your time to see what is being done.
In this post we'll feature 25 experimentations and demos from various designers/developers using CSS3. Some have more practical real-world uses than others, but all of them demonstrate what can be done with CSS3 and some creativity.
Look Ma, No Flash!
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Free Set of High Res Plain Brown Paper Textures from Vandelay Premier
A few weeks ago we launched Vandelay Premier, a membership-based site that provides premium-quality design and career resources. Today we're releasing a free set of 4 plain brown paper textures as a sample of what is available for members. These textures can be downloaded and used by anyone, and the standard Vandelay Premier extended license applies to this free set as well.
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Web Design Trends: Skylines and Cityscapes
One common trend that a number of web designers are using is to include skylines and cityscapes in their designs. In some cases it is a silhouette in the background, in other cases it may be a more significant part of the design. In this post we'll showcase 25 examples, and at the end of the post you'll find links to some Photoshop brush sets that will allow you to add this to your own work.
Ghostown Studios
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25 Flash Portfolios for Your Inspiration
Although HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery are able to accomplish a lot of exciting results and gaining popularity, Flash is still used by a number of impressive websites. In this post we'll showcase 25 Flash portfolio sites. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next year or two with the future of Flash. For now, here is some Flash inspiration.
John Wright
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Comment to Win A Free Unlimited Plan from Wix!
Wix provides anyone with the opportunity to easily build a website. They offer a few different packages, including one for free websites. Wix has offered to provide two readers of the Vandelay Design Blog with unlimited accounts for one year (a $150 value)!
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