An article I worked on has recently been published to MSDN. The article, Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites, walks designers through the process of creating a custom brand in SharePoint Publishing sites as well as helping developers take the design and implementing it as a custom brand using Features and Solutions.

Here's a summary on what the article is all about:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 publishing sites make use of the Office SharePoint Server Publishing Features to provide capabilities for creating engaging Web content management (WCM) sites. Frequently used as Internet-facing Web sites, these sites require the use of custom-designed user interfaces to establish an online corporate identity. This process, whether it is used on a traditional HTML page or in Office SharePoint Server, is known as Web site branding. Publishing sites make use of master pages, page layouts, Web Parts, and CSS to enable designers and developers to create branded Web sites that can rival the designs of many popular Web sites today. This article focuses on the mechanics of properly planning and creating a design for an external, Internet Web site by using a publishing site. The article uses as a specific example a fictitious travel company, Adventure Works Travel, which needs to create a heavily branded SharePoint site. Figure 1 shows this publishing site.

I'd like to thank Randy Drisgill, fellow SharePoint MVP for assisting with this paper.

» MSDN: Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites