Custom Website Design

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 re-design worth the time, effort, and cost.

Like any site design/development, a clear set of goals and purposes should be established to direct the project. Without knowing specifically why the site is being re-designed or what needs to be improved, you may wind up with a better looking design, but it is unlikely to be more effective for the business or for the users.

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The people at FlashEff and Jumpeye Components are giving away 3 FlashEff Premium Unlimited licenses to readers of Vandelay Design! If you’re not familiar with FlashEff, it’s a great resource for quickly and easily creating Flash animation without coding.

FlashEff Premium is the first flash 3rd party AS3.0 component that is 100% compatible with both Flash CS3 and Flash CS4! FlashEff can be used by anyone who knows a little Flash from a total beginner to a Flash guru.

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The color scheme of a website is obviously one of the most significant design decisions that needs to be made. When it comes to color schemes, there are all kinds of possibilities. Some use a bright, colorful scheme to create an attractive website. The sites that are featured in this post are using a simple color scheme of mostly black, white and gray.

Monochromatic color schemes can be used with any color, not just black and white, but we’ll be focusing on black and white here. Most of these sites use other colors sparingly, which can be extremely effective for making certain elements stand out. Also, because the element of color has been reduced in these designs, many of them rely heavily on typography and layout structure, as you will see in those being featured.

The New Yorker

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One of the great things about the WordPress platform is the excellent community surrounding it. Whether you are looking for help with a specific problem or if you’re just interested in finding some blogs to follow for occasional tutorials, there are plenty of resources available. Here is a look at 10 of the best sites for WordPress users and theme designers.

Weblog Tools Collection

There is probably no better resource for staying up-to-date with theme and plugin releases than Weblog Tools Collection. Whether you want to find new themes and plugins from others or get some exposure for your own, Weblog Tools Collection is a great resource. In addition, it’s a great resource for general WP news.

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Now that November is winding down it’s time to take a look at the best items from the month. I hope this re-cap provides you with some new and helpful content that you hadn’t seen before.
Web Design and Development:
CSS Tip #1: Resetting Your Styles with CSS Reset - Six Revisions

Getting Ready for WordPress 2.7: Really […]

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A few months ago I published a collection of 45 Photoshop tutorials for creating wallpaper. Since then I have come across many other quality tutorials on the same subject, so I put together a second collection of wallpaper tutorials.

Typography Wallpaper in Photoshop

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Comment design can either help to give a blog theme a creative look, or it can be an afterthought that doesn’t get much attention during theme design and development. Avatars are now being used by a lot of bloggers (partly due to easy integration with WordPress) to make the comment section more personal and to encourage discussion.

In this post we’ll look at about 20 examples of blogs that are using avatars in the comments. Hopefully, these examples will give you some ideas in case you want to use avatars in your own work.

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Last week I published a collection of over 50 excellent navigational menus for your design inspiration. Because I found more examples than I used in that post, and because others seemed to share my appreciation for menu design, I’ve decided to put together a second collection.

The Worldwide Blogger Bake Off

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If you’re looking for a new theme for your WordPress blog or website, you’re in luck. Nick Roach of Elegant Themes has offered to give four one-year memberships to readers of Vandelay Design.

I’m sure many of you are already familiar with Elegant Themes, but you may or may not be aware of their business model and how it differs from most premium themes. With Elegant Themes you can pay $19.95 per year for unlimited access to their marketplace of themes. There are currently 16 themes available, some with multiple color schemes to choose from, and more themes are being developed.

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When I’m looking at excellent websites for design inspiration, one of my favorite aspects of design to notice is the navigation menu. While I enjoy seeing excellent designs of all types (minimal to artistic to colorful to dark) and various aspects of the site (including headers and footers), a well-designed and well-executed navigation menu can have more impact on my appreciation of a site than any other single piece of the design.

In this post I’d like to take a look at more than 50 stellar examples of navigation menus that positively impact the design of a website. The list includes a great deal of variety. Regardless of what you personally prefer, there should be some inspirational examples in here for you.

Housing Works

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