SharePoint Branding Useful sites

Here are 2 very good and useful sites from where we can get every information about how to change look and feel about SharePoint, it has tiny details about each master page classes.

http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/

http://sharepointexperience.com/csschart/csschart.html

It's like Bible for branding, Many Thanks to sites!

How to deploy custom master page using solution package in SharePoint 2010

Microsoft provided many great features and functionality into Visual Studio 2010 for developing any solutions for SharePoint 2010, with Visual Studio 2010 we can create and mapped 14 HIVE folders very easily.

Microsoft provided very detailed and step by step guide for how to create and deploy any branding solutions using Visual Studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg447066.aspx

One more good reference link: http://sharepointchick.com/archive/2010/03/26/deploying-a-custom-master-page-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx

SharePoint 2010 Branding – Master Page

As we all know that MOSS 2007 master page is not going to work properly with SharePoint 2010, in other way it is always good to create new master page for SharePoint 2010, there are some changes in placeholder name for 2010 master page and some new placeholder introduced in 2010 master page like ribbon tag, etc..

V4.Master is default master page for 2010; codeplex also has provided starter master pages for 2010 which will be very useful.

Here are some very good links to follow for starting creating master page for SharePoint 2010, links has detailed information regarding from where to start and how.

http://www.sharepointedutech.com/2011/01/24/sharepoint-2010-branding-series-part-two/ 

http://startermasterpages.codeplex.com/ (codeplex master pages)

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=386

Here is link for SharePoint 2010 CSS reference names: http://sharepointexperience.com/csschart/csschart.html

Good Luck with master page designing :)