Information Filled Under ‘Layouts’ Category
Most designers don’t particularly enjoy the financial side of running a business, but handling it properly is a necessary part of being a freelancer or running a design agency. The financial side of the business includes invoicing clients, and in this article we’ll look at some tips and best practices for invoicing. 1.
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15 Invoicing Tips for Designers and Freelancers
Almost two years ago I got to know Jacob Gube of Six Revisions as both of us had relatively new blogs in the design community. Since then I’ve followed Six Revisions as it has grown to become one of the leading blogs on web design and development with over 40,000 subscribers. If you follow Six Revisions you know that Jacob is a very talented designer, developer, and writer
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Design Instruct: A New Resource for the Design Community
In the past we’ve published two posts showcasing excellent photography portfolio sites, and today we’re following up with the third edition (see 25 of the Best Photographer Portfolio Websites and 25 of the Best Photographer Portfolio Websites – Part II ). If you’re looking for more design inspiration from high-quality portfolio sites, see our gallery site Folio Focus. World In My Lens Josh Tilton Warwick Saint Levon Biss Charles L
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25 of the Best Photography Portfolio Sites – Part III
Our friends at Elegant Themes have offered to give away five one-year memberships to readers of the Vandelay Design blog! This is a great prize for some lucky bloggers or website owners. if you’re not familiar with Elegant Themes they offer premium WordPress themes on a membership/subscription basis. And the price is a very affordable $19.95 per year
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Win a Free Membership to Elegant Themes
A current trend is web design inspired by nature. I’m sure you’ve seen sites with illustrated backgrounds or headers of a sky or horizon, or maybe a large background picture of something from nature. In this post we’ll feature 65 resources that can help you with your own nature-inspired design
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65 Resources for Nature-Inspired Design
Our other blog DesignM.ag has included a job board for about the past year. The job board has just undergone some significant changes and been re-launched. If you’re not familiar with it, the DesignM.ag job board provides designers and developers with a place to find work (freelance and employment opportunities), and helps companies to find skilled workers
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The DesignM.ag Job Board Has Been Re-Launched, with Free Job Listings!
Since the year is winding down, we thought it would be helpful to go back and pick out the best Illustrator tutorials that were published in 2009. The year was full of great tutorials, and 50 of the best are featured here. For more Illustrator tutorials please see: 30 Text Effect Tutorials for Adobe Illustrator 40 Tutorials for Working with Shapes in Illustrator 25 Tutorials for Using Illustrator and Photoshop Together for Outstanding Results Smoothly Shift Winter Colors While Creating an Icy, Vector Landscape How to Create a Landscape Wallpaper for Your Desktop Create a Grisly Zombie Illustration with a Pen Tablet How to Create a Vector Wacom Tablet in Illustrator Create a Rolling Stones Inspired Tongue Illustration Create a Happy Sun Character Create a Milk Bottle with a Funny Cow Label Create a Character Mascot with Adobe Illustrator CS4 How to Create a Craft’s Inspired Vector Kid Illustration How to Create a Photorealistic iMac and Magic Mouse Blend and Mask Yourself a Great Poster How to Design a Skate Deck with a Cool Skull Pattern Bling Bling Text Effect Perfect Silhouette with Live Trace 3D Lighted Text Effect Create a Realistic Candy Bar in Illustrator Create a Cute Panda Bear Face Icon Quick Tutorial: Gradient Strokes Illustrator Full Spectrum Spirograph Realistic Orange How to Create a Smokin’ Western Type Treatment in Illustrator How to Create Shiny, Vector Dice in Illustrator How to Make an Icy Cocktail How to Create an Energy Saving Bulb in Illustrator How to Create a Rainy Windo Vector Background Turn any Font into a Sketch Font How to Create Seamless Watermark Patterns Abracadabra, How to Create a Magic Hat Icon Design and Print Bold Promo Cards in Under 60 Minutes How to Create an Identity Package in Illustrator How to Create a Vector Illustration and Prepare it for Micro-Stock Sale Geometric Flower Effect Logo in Illustrator Rad Pattern in Illustrator that Makes You Dizzy Complex Symbols with Pathfinder Creating Editable Letterpress Styled Text Illustrator Ring Shape Via Overlapping Crescents Effect Illustrator Swatches Gradient Background Effect Illustrator Diamond Flower How to Draw a Vector Kiwi Gradient Mesh Flower Adobe Illustrator Textures Striping Live Type in Adobe Illustrator Blend Tool Backgrounds Design a Cute Hamster Avatar Easily Create Sticker Text and Graphic Effect in Illustrator Create a Vector Art Twitter Bird Character in Adobe Illustrator Everything You Ever Want to Know About Creating Seamless Patterns in Illustrator How to Create an Awesome Vector Skate Deck Design Elegant Gradient Ribbon in llustrator Create an Awesome Space Rocket in Illustrator For some Photoshop tutorials please see: 40 Photoshop Tutorials for Lighting and Abstract Effects 25+ Photoshop Tutorials for Poster Design 25 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating 3D Text Effects Photoshop Tutorial Hall of Fame Looking to Hire a Designer or Developer
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The 50 Best Adobe Illustrator Tutorials from 2009
Our friends at IconShock have designed another set of high-quality free icons especially for readers of the Vandelay Design blog. This set includes 5 gadget icons that will help to make your designs look great. The icons are free for personal or commercial use, but cannot be re-distributed or sold as your own.
Adobe AIR gives developers all kinds of possibilities to create applications. As Adobe’s websites says, “The Adobe® AIR® runtime lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems.” In this post we’ll feature 35 tutorials that will help you to learn more about working with AIR
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35 Adobe AIR Tutorials for Web Developers
Showcases of excellent minimalist web design have always been a favorite of readers of this blog, and today we’re happy to publish the seventh edition in the series. Here you’ll find 40 websites that avoid clutter and use minimalism effectively. If you love this style of design, check out our gallery site Minimal Exhibit
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40 Beautiful Minimalist Websites – Part 7
Last month we announced a partnership with Fanurio Time Tracking and Invoicing and offered a $10 discount ($49 instead of $59) on Fanurio’s software. This is just a reminder that the discount period ends in one week, December 16, 2009.
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7 Days Remaining to Get $10 Off Fanurio Time Tracking and Invoicing
Communicating effectively with your clients is key to the success of your projects and the structure of your freelance business. The process of communication begins before the client even agrees to have you work on their project, and it should remain as a constant throughout your entire relationship
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Tips for Effective Communication with Your Clients
If you’re a regular reader of the Vandelay Design blog you’re probably aware that we launched a small network of five gallery sites about six months ago. We’re happy to announce the addition of a sixth gallery, Icon Fever . Icon Fever will showcase the best icon packs available for designers
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Introducing Icon Fever, an Icon Gallery
Site search functionality is extremely important for ecommerce websites , especially larger ones. In order for the site to make sales, visitors must be able to find what they are looking for as effectively as possible. While many shoppers will prefer to use the standard navigation on the site, searches are very common from visitors who aren’t able to quickly find what they want
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Site Search Trends for Ecommerce Websites
Getting feedback and making use of it is essential to a successful design project. However, the communication process with clients and with team members can become quite cumbersome to manage with the amount of emails that are sent back and forth and the various revisions and versions of the project.
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21 Resources for Getting Design Feedback
This post features tutorials for designing various characters and cartoons in Illustrator and Photoshop. Characters are often used for branding websites or companies, so it is certainly a useful skill. For other tutorials, you may be interested in: 40 Photoshop Illustration Tutorials 27 New and Fresh Illustrator Tutorials 30 Text Effect Tutorials for Adobe Illustrator Create a Super Happy Octopus Character Create a Cute Furry Vector Monster in Illustrator Create Simple Cartoon Characters in Photoshop How to Create an Original Pin-Up Girl in Photoshop Drunken Monkey Photoshop Tutorial Drawing Homer Simpson How to Create a Website Mascot Create a Blue Vector Character from Pencil Sketch to Coloring Create a Cute Vector Monster from a Pencil Sketch Create a Cute Panda Bear Face Icon How to Create a Vector Illustration and Prepare it for Micro-Stock Sale Illustrator Tutorial – Create a Gang of Vector Ninjas How to Illustrate a Cute Emo Kid The Making of Abe, the Are My Sites Up?
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30 Tutorials for Designing Fun and Creative Characters