Vandelay Design

I found these two lists: http://speckyboy.com/2010/02/25/50-amazing-personal-blog-web-designs/ http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/personal-websites/ I found Andrea Mann's website (http://www.andreamann.com/) to be especially clean and to the point.

http://www.dribbble.com is my favorite source right now for inspiration. Tons of extremely talented designers. Some of my other favorite resource: http://www.smashingmagazine.com -- great showcases http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/ -- inspiration and tutorials http://twitter.com/#!/TheSash/designers -- a list of awesome designers on twitter

good to know you got PS CS5 to play with. i suggest you google few hours for web2.0 design theories and concepts, like - how to create web2.0 effects with photoshop, glossy text/image effects, reflections effects, how to create nice gradients. watch videos, listen podcasts, go through listapart articles if you have time http://www.alistapart.com/topics/design/ tune up your design concepts first. you can practice with vandelaydesign photoshop tutorials list. http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/photoshop-tutorials/ choose the one easy for you to begin with. and once you master these basic skills, you can then search for "design inspiration" around the web to see how other designers are making web beautiful. when you understand the design principles, design tool becomes just a matter of choice. all the best.

Minimalism fans should check out the following (they're up to 7 galleries now): http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design-inspiration/

Did some google searching and these sites had great examples of some cool stuff that can be done if you invest the time. For Data Visualization: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/50-great-examples-of-data-visu… For Photography Galleries: http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/best-photographer-websites/

Every designer has his own process: some prefer to sketch first, some use photoshop as their sketch tool. When people watch me use Photoshop, it's very much akin to hacking because I've got all the keyboard shortcuts memorized like the back of my hand. That being said, I tend to start with PS because I'm faster and it's more eco friendly. If you really want to be a designer, then you need to teach yourself the basics. Photoshop suffers from being too accessible, so a lot of amateurs tend to ignore the basic universal rules of design. For starters, learn the basics of grid design, information architecture, and typography. There are a lot of great books on Amazon, but you should be able to get a strong grasp of the basics just by googling: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/26/grid-based-design-six-creat… http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/resources-grid-based-design/ Here's another link that went around Twitter, a lot of simple things (but not obvious to a developer) I think you can apply to ss5u.png such as proper white space / padding, etc.. http://wefunction.com/2009/04/quality-within-web-design/ Like all crafts, you can't expect to be a design god overnight... it takes practice, studying other's work, reading, etc. I think it's admirable that you are learning to design, and if you really love it — keep doing it!!! But from a professional standpoint and as a business owner, don't practice on your company until you're absolutely confident…

also, i just found this... it may help, again, good luck http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/blog-promotion/99-ways-to-promote-your-…

I agree with others who said that the site looks good, but it may be better to show a grid of themes immediately on the first page, and then using the filters would narrow what is shown. Currently users need a minimum of 3 clicks before they see any of the themes (in worst case they need 9 clicks when they specify each 4 category). That's maybe not a huge issue but it could be improved even just by showing some themes after the first category is selected, then narrow the list after the other filters are changed. Another thing i noticed is the loading animation before showing the themes. It may be a little slow because I'm viewing it from the EU and the servers are in US, but it could be improved a little if the next template would be preloaded after the current one is loaded, or even when the filters are already selected but the "Show templates" button isn't clicked yet. For advertising you could try the more design-oriented ad networks: http://vandelaydesign.com/ad-networks/ And in your AdWords campaign you could create ads with more specific keywords that are linking to a page with prefilled filters, for example: users who come from a "Responsive Wordpress themes" ad would have to click only on the "Show themes" because the filters are already set for them on your page. And also more specific keywords could cost less than general more competitive keywords (but specific keywords has less volume so you need to create more of these keyword combinations to get more traffic).

If there was a book that (successfully) teaches how to evaluate product ideas then 9 out of 10 VC funded companies wouldn't fail. Instead of wasting 90% of their investments a VC would read that book and invested only in the good ideas. In the end no one knows anything but there are plenty of people who will give you advice: http://www.innovationmanagement.se/imtool-articles/how-to-evaluate-ide… https://thesecondprinciple.com/creativity/criteria-to-help-evaluate-cr… https://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/how_to_evaluate_ideas.php https://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/establishing-a-process-to-ev… https://www.inc.com/stephen-key/how-to-effectively-evaluate-your-new-p… https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/81940 http://www.vandelaydesign.com/business-idea/ https://hbr.org/2010/03/the-2minute-opportunity-checkl http://www.fuckedupstartups.com/fs-adviser/startup-initiator-idea-eval…