Articles by Vandelay Design from December 2015

Hundreds of design resources can be found online to improve any web or mobile UI project. You can find everything from vector graphics to tileable textures and even quality resources for abstract...Cl...

Thunderbird is a popular free email application from Mozilla, the people behind Firefox. And just like Firefox, one of the reasons for Thunderbird’s popularity is the number of quality add-ons.....

Every website has its own unique style and relevant design properties. Unique backgrounds aren’t often found in minimalist designs, but other styles use some incredible website backgrounds with....

For most designers pricing services is not something that is the highlight of the job. Still, it is something that you'll have to deal with if you're freelancing or working for a small firm. Here's......

By now, the entire world is aware of Steve Harvey’s blunder while announcing the winner of this year’s Miss Universe competition. His error of announcing Miss Colombia as the winner in...C...

Freelance designers, as well as those who work for small design studios, often face the challenge of getting the most productivity out of their time and achieving maximum efficiency. While this can......

Blockly is a web-based visual programming editor by Google, that lets you drag blocks together to build programs with ease. All code is open source, and totally free for you to use and experiment...Cl...

Web design requires a complex marriage of creativity and user experience concepts. Together these skillsets can make fashionable and usable interfaces for websites and mobile apps. Photoshop brushes.....

Efficiency and effectiveness are equally important to freelance designers and small design firms (and large ones as well, but that won't be the focus of this article). There are obviously any number.....

Web design is a continuously evolving process. What is of use today, can easily become obsolete tomorrow. For example, there once was a time when gradients were the norm in color, but today,...Click t...

The proliferation of online news sites doesn’t appear to be slowing anytime soon. The quality of online magazine design trends have grown to cover featured post widgets, large thumbnail images,....

Re-designing a website is more than just giving it an improved new look. The successes and shortcomings of the existing site are invaluable in knowing how to truly improve the site and make the...Clic...

Online retailers are always looking for how to best provide an enjoyable online shopping experience for their customers. The online competition is fierce. With so many options, how does a retailer...C...

One of the most important responsibilities of a website is to communicate with its visitors. Regardless of whether the site is a blog, a portfolio site, a corporate site, or an e-commerce site, it...C...

Every website will need at least some occasional analysis and maybe a few tweaks to keep it performing as it should. Fortunately, there are some typical signs that can indicate trouble and...Click thr...

Cinema 4D is a modeling, animation, and rendering program that allows designers to create impressive 3D works. While it does present a seetp learning curve, Cinema 4D offers a lot of power to those......

I feel that both the beginning and the end of the day are critical to maximizing productivity and running a profitable business. In this post I’ll mention several actions that you could take at....

Web designers will get to work with all different types of clients. While that's one of the nice things that keeps the job from getting too monotonous, we also have to be able to communicate...Click t...

Photoshop presets like brushes and patterns get plenty of attention, but custom shapes can be equally as useful. Because custom shapes are vectors they can be scaled to larger sizes with no decrease.....

Portfolio websites are often excellent sources of design inspiration because every designer and agency wants to create a great impression with a quality design. The absolute best portfolio sites...Cli...

The world’s favorite search engine, Google, has already developed a highly complex algorithm of its own when it comes to serving search results to its users. Webmasters and website owners...Clic...

What makes a landing page appealing? It needs to be aesthetically pleasing, sure, but it also needs to be easy to navigate and show off the sites content in a way that the visitor can quickly...Click ...

Whenever I’m looking for design inspiration I always end up on startup websites & startup landing pages. They are, in my opinion, the best of the best in terms of what you can see online.......

Some days back, we posted an overview of the MailChimp Year in Review 2015 report. Among other things, the Year in Review talked about the growth of email marketing, and the rise of A/B tests for...Cl...

A solid content strategy can help you turn casual blog readers into qualified leads?Your content strategy is never without lead generation tools. Leads generation can be quite tricky. According to......

A solid content strategy can help you turn casual blog readers into qualified leads?Your content strategy is never without lead generation tools. Leads generation can be quite tricky. According to......

Websites in the travel industry often place an emphasis on the design and appearance because a good-looking site will hopefully draw more interest for the destination. Many of them also use...Click th...

AngularJS has been rising in popularity and is under steady development. Earlier today, Angular 2 Beta was announced, and is available for developers to download and get started with. Angular 2 comes....

Freelancing is quite addicting. Being your own boss, setting your own hours, working from your favorite location, just to name a few. But every freelancer knows that the job comes with more than a...C...

Recently, MailChimp released their Annual Report for 2015, showcasing some of their major accomplishments from this year. The list talks about a lot many new things that MailChimp did, such as hiring....

If you're looking to create designs with a grunge style, you will want to choose the right font to get the look you're after. While you can add texture and grunge effects to the text manually,...Click...

Many of the most popular posts on this blog are collections of Photoshop tutorials in specific categories. I thought it would be helpful to also do a post that features the best tutorials of all...Cli...

For quite a while, Sketch has served as a popular design tool for the Mac platform. Recetly, Sketch came up with a new version — 3.4.4 Sketch 3.4.4 does not bring any grand changes to the fore,....

Color theory is a vast subject that mostly requires application to understand. But color selection is also relative to the medium, where a digital designer looks at colors differently than an...Click ...

For all types of designers inspiration and creativity are vital to success. If you read many blogs in the web design community I’m sure you’re familiar with posts of inspirational...Click ...

For all types of designers inspiration and creativity are vital to success. If you read many blogs in the web design community I’m sure you’re familiar with posts of inspirational...Click ...

We like to showcase different types and styles of logo designs to help with providing inspiration for your own design projects, and today we're focusing on text-based logos. It's certainly possible......

With e-commerce websites, the usability of the website and the ease of finding the right products can make a huge difference in terms of sales and revenue. Some effective e-commerce sites use very...C...

Web designers, especially freelancers, face the challenge of effectively managing their time while juggling many responsibilities. There are a number of online apps and tools that can help you take......

As winter comes you may be looking for new wallpaper to decorate your screen. If so, you're in luck because there are plenty of options from which to choose. Here we'll showcase 50 amazing winter...Cl...

The logo and branding of a restaurant can have a big impact on how people view the restaurant. In an industry with a high rate of failure it’s important to make a strong impression and retain......

Few days back, Automattic unveiled a desktop client for WordPress.com — named Calypso, it is a Mac application that lets you manage WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected self-hosted WordPress...Cl...

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year! Why not celebrate with some of our favorite free Christmas vectors from around the web? We've hand-selected some of the most festive and high-quality free...C...

As a productivity-conscious lazy person, I am always on the look-out for apps that save me time, or reduce mental / physical stress. As a result, I have amassed a set of incredibly useful...Click thro...

As a web designer you may be faced with the challenge of getting your work and your abilities in front of others. If this is the case, here is a list of 10 different things you can do to get...Click t...

Adobe Lightroom has served as a useful tool for retouching and editing photos on both desktops and mobile devices. Recently, Adobe announced that Lightroom, starting with version 1.4, shall now be...C...

Many designers freely release their own paper texture resources to the design community. This allows anyone to craft interfaces with texture without having to scan or build your own patterns from...Cl...

If you design websites for clients you know that most clients these days want the ability to update the site themselves. Fortunately, content management systems make this possible. However,...Click ...

Having taken months in development, WordPress 4.4 is finally available for download, and it comes loaded with a wide range of features: responsive images, better oEmbeds, a new default WordPress...Cli...

Photography websites tend to be somewhat simple, allowing the photos to take center stage rather than the design of the site. Logos of photographers often take a similar approach. In this post we'll.....

Website building techniques, including wireframing, using online website building tools, or outsourcing design/development activities have their pros and cons.Wireframing is a popular approach, but......

For Mac users, Sketch has been a popular choice when it comes to design apps. Ever since Adobe decided to pull the plug on Fireworks, Sketch rose to prominence, primarily because of its ease of use,.....

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....

One of the most important aspects of marketing and promoting a website or blog is attracting inbound links. A great deal of effort goes into creating quality links. But before these link building...Cl...

Google Ventures, or GV, recently published their 2015 Year in Review, highlighting the major investments and activities of 2015. With investments in over 39 countries, 2015 was surely a busy year for....

For quite a while, Adobe has dominated the world of design tools and software. However, there is a new design collaboration tool on the block, and unlike Adobes primarily desktop-based offerings,...Cl...

Last year, Apple introduced a new programming language, called Swift. Meant primarily to help developers code applications for iOS and Mac machines, Swift grew at a modest pace for the first year....C...

For bloggers and website owners building a strong network is crucial. In order to be a great networker, you need to make yourself valuable for others. Fortunately, there are many ways to do so, even.....

Most of us naturally form opinions about the websites we visit. Some of them we love so much that we come back several times a week, and others leave us with a bad experience that causes us to never.....

Part of having a successful website is attracting visitors. Keeping those visitors on your site, however, is another topic altogether. Of course, once you have the visitor on your site you'll want to....

Every website owner or marketer needs to know what is going on with their website and visitors in order to know how to improve and get better results. Website analytics tools can provide data and...Cl...

Freelance web design can be an ideal part-time business. Starting on a part-time basis allows you to gain valuable experience and ease your way into full-time status rather than taking the plunge and....

Designers are often looking for examples of creative business cards for inspiration, whether it be for designing their own cards or for client work. In the past we have showcased letterpress business....

Web design is a profession that requires constant growth and development of abilities in order to remain competitive. Technology is obviously changing constantly, and design trends certainly do not......

Recently, the PHP development team announced the release of PHP 7.0, the latest version of the popular web development language. PHP 7.0 has taken quite some time in the making, and its release was......

Designers love free design resources for several reasons. One of them is that by downloading a free UI kit, for example, you can see how others have created various design elements and how they chose....

GIMP, the popular open source image editing application, recently released its latest version: GIMP 2.9.2 This version of GIMP brings several new features to the table, such as better color...Click th...

Those of use that read and visit tons of blogs everyday have grown to expect certain designs and styles. In many cases blog design tends to be less attractive and less innovative than website design.....

In this era of smartphones, mobile applications have become quite popular. In fact, every major service or tool on the internet, be it a social network or an email service provider, cannot survive...C...

Every great website features a number of common pages with similar usability techniques. One of the most common yet unrecognized pages that every site should have is the 404 error page. This guides......

Some of the biggest decisions bloggers face involve their blog theme. Should you change your theme? Should you pay for a premium theme or a custom theme? What should you look for in a new theme...Clic...

All designers struggle at times to get a design to achieve a look that they are thoroughly happy with. Many times we'll have an idea that really seems like it will work, but when it's executed in...Cl...

If youd like design better, design faster and run a more profitable business, a subscription to Vandelay Premier can help! Vandelay Premier gives you access to thousands of graphics and business...Cli...

Maintaining an active blog has been one of the best decisions I ever made in terms of my career. I feel that every designer could greatly benefit from running a blog if they have the desire to share.....

As a designer, working for clients is much different than designing a site for yourself. There are obviously pros and cons, but here are ten things that I have found to be true.1. No Two Clients...Cli...

Ever since HTML5 was released, Flash fell out of favor with web designers and developers alike. Everything that Flash could do, HTML5 could manage better, and quicker. As such, it was not a surprise.....

A few years back I launched what was called Vandelay Premier to test my ability to sell premium stock graphics. While I would only consider it a moderate success, one main thing I quickly...Click thro...

We frequently showcase examples of well-designed websites in various industries, and we had a reader request a collection of community-oriented websites for inspiration. In this post we've gathered......

The internet has become a very interactive environment for users. Websites need to be specifically built in a way that captures the attention of visitors and keeps them coming back, or they will...Cli...

One of the goals of most websites and blogs is to make money. Whether the intention is to build a profitable business or just to cover the costs to operate the site, most website owners need to get......

There’s value to be found in static websites such as portfolios or landing pages. But interactive websites have become the norm as more people grow accustomed to digital interactions on the...Cl...

All business websites intend to create some type of value for the owner. Maybe the goal is to sell products. Or maybe it is to promote services. A common approach right now is to make money with...Cli...