SharePoint branding using SharePoint designer 2010

Question

I'm trying to brand our SharePoint 2010 site using designer but can't find the start point. I've tried creating new master page from "minimal.master", but it doesn't have other SharePoint control like Site Actions-Settings etc .

Any tutorial or doc which can explains about 2010 branding ?

Rish

Answer 1

There is a really good starting master page that includes all lots of useuful comments from Randy Drisgill: http://blog.drisgill.com/2010/02/microsofts-sharepoint-2010-starter.html

He lays out which sections of the master page handle the different areas (top ribbon bar, site actions, left navigation, etc) and it makes it clear how to include the various components that go into a SharePoint site.