Articles by Vandelay Design from August 2012

Today we have a set of 5 grunge paper textures that are free for downloading. These textures have a different look and feel than the standard paper texture, and they're very useful for creating backgr...

Our friends at BlueCotton have offered to give $200 of printing credit to a lucky reader of the Vandelay Design Blog. But that is really just the beginning. They have also set up a page on their site ...

Most designers spend an incredible amount of time in their office on the computer. Because of this, it's important to have a work area that is comfortable, enjoyable, and encourages creativity. The sp...

As WordPress has continued to grow in popularity, developers have continued to enhance the options available to users through advanced themes and plugins. While WordPress is popular with designers and...

When it comes to company identities and branding, elements from nature are often used in the design. In certain industries the natural element is a result of the product or service that the business o...

Grunge effects like textures and scratches can be used create backgrounds, to distress text, or just to add a subtle texture to an element in a design. One of the easiest ways to add texture and scrat...

Auto Focus is a free WordPress theme created with photographers in mind. It uses a responsive layout and includes a variety of features that make it a great choice for photographers who need an attrac...

Searching for design inspiration takes a lot of time if you browse galleries because you will not find only high quality design works, but also some that are simply average, or below. Having a few sit...

Web and graphic designers are in the fortunate position of having a lot of quality free resources at their disposal. The huge number of blogs and websites in the industry and the massive audience of d...

As the popularity of WordPress as a CMS has continued to grow, we've seen an increase in specialty themes and solutions for specific industries. The real estate industry is one that has been the focus...

The standard Facebook layout is well known amongst fans of social media. Many of the dynamic form fields on the website started a huge trend of Ajax-powered backend scripts. Now we can see open source...

If you're interested in art and other types of design aside from web design, you may find a lot of inspiration from this collection of pencil drawings. In this post we showcase 35 amazing drawings fro...

Today we are releasing our latest mega UI set, Precio. This set includes well over 200 individual elements that can be used in your own designs, which can greatly reduce the amount of time needed. Pre...

Being able to work efficiently is one of the keys to success as a freelance designer. There are many ways that you can go about improving your own efficiency, and taking advantage of available resourc...

ioDeck is a new app that addresses one of the most common frustrations for web designers/developers, creating forms. Forms are a necessary part of almost every website, but they can often become time ...

WordPress is an immensely powerful blogging and website platform. There are, however, some important steps to carry out as soon as possible and some elementary mistakes to avoid once WordPress has bee...

Every now and then we like to showcase freebies that can designers can use to save some of their own time. Quality Photoshop actions can be great resources to have in your arsenal because in the right...

Today we have a great freebie that can be used in your own web design projects. This UI kit was designed by Michael Reimer of BestPSDFreebies and it is features a style of simple elegance that will ma...

There are not as many newer gaming fansites which utilize the power of HTML5 and CSS3 techniques. Some of the more popular gaming titles such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts have a devoted followi...

This set of 5 high resolution stones textures can be used to create backgrounds in your own work. Each photo shows a large number of small stones as opposed to a close-up texture from one large stone....

We recently published a tutorial that demonstrated the new Iris Blur in Photoshop CS6. Another improvement in CS6 is the ability to quickly and easily create tilt shift effects. In this post I'll demo...

While Facebook's changes and re-designs always bring some criticism from users, one thing that this year's move to timeline photos accomplished was to allow users the opportunity to create something u...

In many settings advertisements tend to be ignored or overlooked. When flipping through a magazine you probably skip past the ads unless something really catches your attention. The same thing applies...

Photoshop CS6 brings new features in the Blur Gallery that give you the control to easily add precise blur effects to your photos. In this brief tutorial we'll be looking specifically at the Iris Blur...

Today we have a free download that includes 14 different silhouettes of children. Each is provided in vector format (.ai file) and a Photoshop brush set (.abr file) is included as well....

How much will it cost to have you make me a website?At some point in your career, youve probably been asked this. You were probably amused or insulted, thinking that heres another prospect who just do...

Have you heard about digital signage?Maybe youve heard people in the design industry discuss digital displays. If youre new to the topic its alright. There are many folks in the industry that are just...