An article I worked on has recently been published to MSDN. The article, Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2010 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 SharePoint Server 2010 publishing sites use Publishing Features to provide capabilities to create engaging web content management (WCM) sites. Frequently used as Internet-facing websites, these sites require the use of custom-designed user interfaces (UIs) to establish an online corporate identity. Creating custom-designed UIs, either on a traditional HTML page or in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, is known as website branding. Publishing sites use master pages, page layouts, Web Parts, and cascading style sheets (.css files) to enable designers and developers to create branded websites with designs that can rival those of many current and popular websites today. This article focuses on the mechanics of properly planning and creating a design for an external, Internet-facing website with a publishing site, as shown in Figure 1. The article uses a fictitious travel company, Adventure Works Travel, as an example of a company that wants to create an extensively branded SharePoint site.

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

» MSDN: Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2010 Publishing Sites