Change is good.

What’s New?

A number of things have changed over the past few months — my current circumstances not withstanding — I’m now in the position where I’m able to take on consulting work and wanted to communicate that fundamental change on many levels (the most obvious place to start being my blog, of course).

I’ve talked about shifting focuses on this site for the last couple of years, but never had the time or need to push the change forward. I do now and what you’re looking at is the result. Where before my blog mostly concentrated on the things that interest me (it still does), it’s taken second stage to the need to showcase my work in a meaningful way.

You can learn more about what I offer as a consultant here, but if you’re more interested in the work I’ve done, you can take a look at a cross section of that material here.

What To Expect

I’ll still be continuing my series on WordPress Theme Development and the ongoing updates to some of the other minor series, but I will also be posting about the work I’ve completed in the form of case studies. My hope is that I can share some of my experience in a way that is meaningful (without putting me out of work ).

About This Theme

This new WordPress theme is called “Dusk”, currently at version 0.5, as I’m quite sure there will be a number of tweaks to the design and features over the coming weeks.

It’s possible that I will release this theme to the public in a year or so when I’m ready to re-design – or perhaps I’ll market it as a premium theme (who knows). But I do plan to release it at some point as I have with my other themes.

The Design Concept

The inspiration for this new theme came largely from watercolour paintings – mostly the texture and the vibrancy of colours, but also the techniques involved in working with the medium.

I felt that it would be a strong juxtaposition to the more technical and rigid structure of the content – one balancing the other. The primary focus of this theme is showcasing my work first and my writing second. The layout for the main page was given a unique structure most appropriate to the type of blended content without overpower the other.

Behind The Design

“Dusk” is based on the 960px grid concept and implemented using Blueprint CSS. I’ve been focusing on Blueprint CSS lately as it (amongst others) expedites some of the common CSS development tasks, allowing me to focus on ensuring the creative aspects of a design aren’t compromised. This of course assumes that the design adheres to the 960px grid concept (and this one does).

Final Thoughts

If you’re interested in how I might help your project succeed, I can help you in one capacity or another. Don’t hesitate to ask

Strategic use of texture can help to shape the perception of a design; it can turn a simple website layout into something evocative; when delivered in context with the subject matter of the site (articles, information, etc), texture can help to communicate tone and attitude.

Texture In Web Design

Visual textures can be lumped into three relative categories:

1. Patterns
2. Photographic
3. Illustrated

Patterns as Texture

Patterns are the most common type of texture that you encounter on the web. In many cases they are tileable images that are rendered as background images in a page, or appear as textured design accents. Patterns can range from illustrated elements that can repeat endlessly, or as three dimensional (often photographic) textures that can evoke a sense of depth and dimension.

Example:

Fig. 1 – Tileable Patterns.

Resources:

• K10K Pixel Patterns
• SquidFingers Patterns
• BgPatterns

Photographs as Texture

It would be more appropriate to consider photographic texture as singular instances of texture applied to the design, rather than something that is explicitly tiled as in the case of patterns. Photographic textures tend to range in subject matter, but the most common example of photographic texture are images that can be used as backgrounds, such as walls (brick, cement, etc).

Example:

Fig. 2-4 – Light, textiles and other industrial textures.

Resources:

• ImageAfter
• iStockPhoto

Illustration as Texture

Illustrated texture is something of a trend over the past few years, where artists and designers mix various sources such as photographs, tileable patterns, and light to create unique textures.

Examples:

Fig. 5-7 – Mixed water color backgrounds.

Resources:

• iStockPhoto
• Brusheezy

Texture in WordPress Themes

Texture as a design element contributes to the overall personality of the design. When it comes to WordPress Themes, authors tend to exhibit a need to communicate an aspect of their personality through the theme they choose to employ on their blog.

If you’re thinking about using texture as part of your design, consider the following:

1. Theme: What is the theme of your theme?
2. Prominence: How prominent are the textures going to be in your design?
3. Repetition: How often and how many repeatable textures are you planning to use in the design?

Bringing it Together

Designing a successful WordPress theme is no different from designing a compelling website layout – both need to illustrate an artistic (and practical) balance of many design concept where texture may be one fundamental aspect of that balance.

When you’re considering the design of your WordPress theme, think about how your chosen texture(s) will work together with your other design elements to communicate the overall theme.

For example, if you’re out to create a theme that needs to communicate and “outdoors lifestyle” or “nature”, you may want to consider using textures that are organic. In a case like this could could mix various types of textures (tileable, photographic and illustrated).

Fig. 8 – Outdoor Italia

The Outdoor Italia site is a great example of how various types of tileable and photographic texture can be used in a design to communicate a theme. The site makes great use of photographic textures in the form of leaves, paper, and the occasional physical item to deliver a sense of depth.

Fig. 9 – Wild About Gardening

The Wild About Gardening is one of my favourite sites for two reasons: the illustration work makes subtle use of — and reference to — watercolor art, and it blends well with photographic texture. This site is a great example of Photographic and Illustrated texture working naturally together to communicate a sense of unity in the design.

The above examples aren’t WordPress themes, but the leap from content to editorial layout isn’t difficult to make.

Remember that not every WordPress design you create has to have shiny buttons and glossy blocks. Take time to experiment with texture in your design, and discover how different textures can dramatically change the tone and style of your design.

While I’m an ardent supporter of promoting the WordPress platform any way I can, the contest documentation sent up red flags after the first and second read through:

1. The rules for entry had been modified once (noted by the site owners) ;
2. The foundation of the contest is rooted in the participant submitting a “concept” but later defines a concept as being a production comp.
3. There’s a fairly ambiguous panel of judges as implied by, “Designs are assessed by a special team from ColorLabs Project…”  — who are these people?
4. Lastly, this: “You understand that by participating in this contest, your theme concept is possibly used by ColorLabs Project and may be made available for purchase on our site. Winners will be awarded a cash prize for their work. Any other theme concept will only be made available for purchase after a once-off fee agreed by both parties. Sales generated off the theme will be kept by the company.”

Get Your Story Straight:

First off, if you’re going to launch a contest, make damn sure that the language surrounding the rules and regulations, as well as the terms and conditions are as clear as you can possibly be. I say this as a a Creative Director and planner who has been involved in advertising campaigns that were build around some hefty prizes. Nothing makes a contest go south faster than poorly written contest literature. Once you post those rules, you had better ensure they are final. I can’t speak for the legal ramifications of changing contest details mid-way through, but I can say there’s a significat level of trust that is lost in having to do so.

Concept vs. Concept Art

Second, a Concept is quite different from Concept Art. Be sure what you’re asking participants for. A Concept, e.g. an idea — is typically something you solicit in written form. Concept Art is visual. In a design contest like this (and considering the last condition in the T&C), asking for a visual concept without providing appropriate conditions to protect the artist’s work is borderline unethical. There is nothing to prevent the contest hosts from turning around and re-creating the concept art into production-ready source files. Participants should be well aware of this possibility.

Industry Peers/Professionals or Your Grandmother?

Third, who the heck are the judges? While there is nothing wrong with not disclosing the judging panel to the general public — to me, there’s a level of trust that a contest host can provide through disclosure. Quite frankly, are the members of the judging panel qualified to act as judges given the criteria? This is pretty grey-area from my experience.

Exactly How Are You Planning To Use My Work?

Lastly, the final condition on the T&C is loosely worded, and relinquishes — as I understand it — a considerable amount of the artist’s rights to the contest host. While on the surface, there is nothing essentially wrong with this practice, but it leaves me questioning the ethics of amassing a royalties-free library of design for resale. On one hand, it may be quite alright to capitalize on the award-winning themes as well as the runners-up, but what of the rest? Are the remaining “unqualified” designs to be saved for later resale or are they to be destroyed? What about compensation for artist? The language surrounding this particular conditions is a little vague.

In any case, I’m not a lawyer — just someone who really wanted to participate in a contest, but unfortunately this one comes off as a scam poorly disguised as a contest. What’s next: timeshares in the Bahamas?

Seriously though, if you are considering participation in any contest of this kind — take the time to educate yourself on your rights as an artist/designer and pay particular attention to the organizers of the contest. At the end of the day you’ll need to judge for yourself whether or not a contest is legitimate and what your work is worth.

For the most part, you may be stuck with using the setup that the Theme Designer decided to adopt.

Blogs typically take one of three common approaches to displaying posts:

1. Posts are displayed as excerpts with a “read more” link.
2. Posts are displayed with the full body of the posting.
3. Only one post is displayed with pagination available.

The first approach — the most common of the three — is likely a result of the Theme Designer choosing to use the out-of-the-box functionality of the blogging software (and to be fair, it is likely the most efficient); however, not everyone wants a cookie cutter solution to displaying their posts.

The reality is such that you don’t actually need to do a lot of work to get your blog postings to appear the way you want them to. I can’t speak for other blogging software packages, but when it comes to WordPress, there are a many techniques you can apply to customize your postings.

WordPress – The Loop

The meat-and-potatoes of WordPress is “The Loop“. If you’ve ever attempted to customize a WordPress theme, it’s likely you’ve encountered this The Loop (essentially a “while” loop). This is an example of a very simple loop (taken from the WordPress codex):

   1: if (have_posts()) :

   2:    while (have_posts()) :

   3:       the_post();

   4:       the_content();

   5:    endwhile;

   6: endif;

This is a better explanation if you’re not too familiar with code:

The Loop is used by WordPress to display each of your posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each of the posts to be displayed on the current page and formats them according to how they match specified criteria within The Loop tags.

If you examine one of the template files of your theme you may encounter a more complicated version of the above snippet.  The Loop is where we are going to start to customize the appearance of your postings.

Postings

A post in WordPress is comprised of a number of elements such as the Title of the post, the Content of the post, and assorted information like the Date/Time, etc. In the common approaches, all of the postings share the exact same format and display identical information.

Boring.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The developers of WordPress were smart enough to realize that while the majority of theme designers don’t mind this type of homogenous approach, there are a few Theme Designers out there who prefer not to follow this pattern. As such, WordPress is built with with the ability to modify how The Loop is applied.

There are several approaches to modifying The Loop, but the two that I prefer are:

1. Use query_posts with counter and offset.
2. Use The Loop with counter and conditions.

The Loop With query_posts(…)

It took me a while to understand what this feature did; quite simply put, it adds additional parameters in the The Loop to instruct WordPress on what to output.

   1: <?php query_posts('showposts=1'); ?>

   2: <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

The snippet above was taken from one of my WordPress themes. In the theme, I use the above approach to display ONLY my most recent posting in full. Here’s a simplified version of the markup I use:

   1: <!-- set main-entry -->

   2: <?php query_posts('showposts=1'); ?>

   3: <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

   4: <div class="main-entry">

   5:     <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

   6:     <?php //the post meta ?>

   7:     <ul class="meta-top">

   8:         <li><strong>Posted:</strong> <?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?></li>

   9:         <li><strong>Author:</strong>  <?php the_author(); ?></li>

  10:         <li><strong>Filed under:</strong> <?php the_category(','); ?></li>

  11:         <li><?php if( get_the_tags() != NULL ) { the_tags('<strong>Tags:</strong> ',', '); }else{ echo "<strong>Tags:</strong> No tags set for this entry."; }?></li>

  12:     </ul>

  13:     <?php

  14:         the_content('Read more...');

  15:     ?>

  16: </div>

  17: <?php endwhile; endif; ?>

  18: <!-- end main-entry -->

In this example, The Loop is executed only once and only once. The query_posts() function passes instructions to The Loop to show only one post (using query_posts(’showposts=1′)). While The Loop is executed, it will output all of the post’s information that I’ve specified using the appropriate Post tags.

NOTE: I have set the container <div> class to “main-entry”. This references a rule in my CSS file that will style the output accordingly.

Unfortunately, you’re stuck with only one posting on your page. We need to display older postings as well, and ideally in a format that is different than the most recent.

As previously mentioned, The Loop was executed only once with the example above. This is a powerful feature of query_posts(), in that you have a tremendous amount of control over The Loop — in this case, how many times it is executed.

To render the older postings, you can do this:

   1: <!-- set past-entry -->

   2: <?php query_posts('showposts=9&offset=1'); ?>

   3: <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

   4: <div class="past-entry">

   5:     <ul class="dateblock left">

   6:         <li class="top"><?php the_time('M Y'); ?></li>

   7:         <li class="bottom"><?php the_time('j'); ?></li>

   8:     </ul>

   9:     <div class="entry-content">

  10:         <h1><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

  11:         <?php

  12:             the_excerpt();

  13:         ?>

  14:     </div>

  15: </div>

  16: <?php endwhile; endif; ?>

  17: <!-- end past-entry -->

Aside from the simpler markup, the core difference between this second snippet and the first are the instructions/parameters in query_posts(), and the CSS class which is referenced.

   1: <?php query_posts('showposts=9&offset=1'); ?>

   2: <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

   3: <div class="past-entry">

If you combine both of the examples above, what you’ll find is that you’re actually running The Loop twice — in the first instance, The Loop only outputs the most recent post. In the second instance, it skips over the most recent  post completely, and outputs as many older posts as you defined in query_posts().

NOTE: if you examine the parameters in the second query_posts() instance, you should see “showposts=9&offset=1” — this will output 10 posts in total on your page, where 9 such posts are older.

Styling The Posts

What you need now are two CSS rules which define:

1. “main-entry”
2. “past-entry”

   1: /* CSS Snippet */

   2: #post-container div.main-entry {

   3:     background-color: #CCCCCC;

   4:     color: #000000;

   5:     font-size: 1em;

   6: }

   7:

   8: #post-container div.past-entry {

   9:     background-color: #ffffff;

  10:     color:#333333;

  11:     font-size: .92em;

  12: }

The XHTML markup does not have to be different between these posts, and as you can see in the CSS snippet above, you can get away with as little as displaying a different background color, font color or a larger font size.

The Caveat

Yes, there is a downside to using query_posts(). Programmatically speaking, you should try to optimize the number of queries you execute against your database. Since WordPress is largely database driven, you can expect a high volume of requests on any given page. Using query_posts() should be done sparingly (I limit it’s use to the homepage of my blog).

Also, if you are wanting to support pagination, you will need to do a little more work to setup the query properly — you can read more about it here.

The Loop With Counter & Conditions

The simplest method to determine and style your most recent post in contrast to your older postings is a pure implementation of “The Loop”. This implementation also relies on using a counter to keep track of how many posts you’re outputting (as determined by your WordPress settings), as well as a condition to determine which class to reference when styling the output.

Here is an example of this in action:

   1: <?php

   2:     if (have_posts()) {

   3:         // the counter (initialized to 0 );

   4:         $n = 0;

   5:         // the while loop

   6:         while (have_posts()) {

   7:             // the CSS class to apply

   8:             $class = ( $n == 0 ) ? "main-entry" : "past-entry";

   9: ?>

  10:             <!-- set post -->

  11:             <div class="<?php echo $class; ?>">

  12:                 <ul class="dateblock">

  13:                     <li class="top"><?php the_time('M Y'); ?></li>

  14:                     <li class="bottom"><?php the_time('j'); ?></li>

  15:                 </ul>

  16:                 <div class="entry-content">

  17:                     <h1><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

  18:                     <?php

  19:                         if( $n == 0 ) {

  20:                             the_content();

  21:                         }else {

  22:                             the_excerpt();

  23:                         }

  24:                     ?>

  25:                 </div>

  26:             </div>

  27:             <!-- set post -->

  28:

  29: <?php

  30:             // incriment the counter

  31:             $n .= 1;

  32:         }

  33:

  34:     }

  35: ?>

As you can see from the example above, we’ve taken a basic instance of The Loop and added in two variables:

1. $n — this is the counter used to determine which which is the most recent (starting at “0″ — the first).
2. $class — this is the CSS class that we want to reference (“main-entry” or “past-entry”).

The method and approach to styling the post is the same as the examples in query_posts(). The XHTML markup can be re-used between new and older postings, but this is not required. With a little work you can supply The Loop with two different sets of markup to render.

The Caveat

While this implementation is rather straight forward, it can get complicated quickly if you want to include more and more variations between postings. Each variation requires a little more forethought, and the appropriate conditions to determine what to do and what to render. What you may end up with is a lot of messy markup that is difficult to read.

Conclusion

It doesn’t take a lot of work to modify your WordPress template to render your most recent posting in a unique fashion. In some cases, you can download plugins to help you style your postings; for me, having to rely on additional plugins seems more overhead than is necessary. The techniques outlined in this article are only two of many such approaches (and certainly a manual approach).

Don’t feel as if you have to select one over the other. In fact, your writing style and your choice of template play a large part in determining which method is most appropriate.

Hi Chris,

I’m really curious on how you got that quote feature on your comment section. Do you mind sharing your code?

Cheers,
[author name omitted]

While this is not a new feature by and large, it is one that I thought would bring a sense of discussion to the linear WordPress comment format much like how forums work. I’ve attempted to use threaded commenting plugins, but they are ugly and overly complicated for something that should be fairly straight forward.

In any case, this is the JavaScript snippet that I wrote (you need jQuery, but comes with the theme)

// attach a function to the quote comment link
  $('a.quote-comment').click( function() {
      var tb = $('#comment');
      var strQuote = $(this).attr('title');
      // assign the value
      tb.val('<blockquote>' + strQuote + '</blockquote>');
      return false;
   });

This is the result:

There are a couple caveats to this feature

1. You can only quote one comment at a time, as I didn’t build in concatenation.
2. It is not parameterized so you’ll have to customize it for your own theme.
3. Requires some additional styling (no big deal).

If anyone wants to improve on this, feel free to share!

Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing, and WordPress is no exception. There are many plugins that offer surprisingly similar features with the exception that one might handle the same task in a slightly different manner.

Sifting through plugin lists isn’t fun either.

I thought I would share a short list of the WordPress plugins that I found to be useful without being too gimmicky.

Posts

Plugin: the_excerpt Reloaded

URL: http://guff.szub.net/2005/02/26/the_excerpt-reloaded/

Description: Displays the excerpt of a posting (or uses the content of your post if no excerpt is available), and formats the excerpt accordingly.

This plugin was developed in 2005, and there are other similar plugins that have come along since, but I like this one simply because it works as advertised. If you’ve downloaded and installed my theme, you’ll notice that I use it in areas such as the main posting, and in the archive or past postings.

Plugin: “Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button”

URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-to-any/

Description: Adding social bookmark features can be a bit of a pain, and implementations are inconsistent. This plugin takes the pain out of adding social bookmarking abilities to your postings using a very simple UI for the user to interact with.

Comments

Plugin: Get Recent Comments

URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-recent-comments/

Description: Displays a formatted list of the most recent comments on your site. This plugin has a number of new features, but I typically use only the basic features — for me it’s a time saver, as well as a quick and easy way to implement a comment list without a lot of work.

Archives

Plugin: SRG Clean Archives

URL: http://www.geekwithlaptop.com/projects/clean-archives/

Description: Displays a formatted list of your archived posts with additional functionality for animation and user interaction.

I just love the fact that I can take this plugin and output an archive with minimal fuss. I disable all of the additional features and apply my own CSS to customize the look and feel. It’s really quite easy, and if you’re into experimenting with some of the extra JavaScript features, you can come up with some fun results.

You don’t need a lot of plugins to enhance the features of your blog, and I personally recommend against relying heavily on plugins; instead, I do recommend that you pick plugins that effectively suit the features you need to communicate better on your blog.

At the time Stephanie Meyer had just released the third book in her debut series, the “Twilight Saga”, and I had admired the book covers while browsing through my local Chapters bookstore.

There are so many books that hit the shelves these days that covers just start to blend together into one big mottled wallpaper. So it was a mild surprise when I encountered the stark black and minimalist cover designs.

The Twilight Theme

Inspired by this, I decided to design and develop a WordPress Theme based on the book covers.

Variations

I thought I would have been satisfied with using only one of the book covers as inspiration, but the more I worked on it, the more I felt that I couldn’t settle with just one. On top of that, I think anyone who would have been interested in using the theme would likely have a favourite cover graphic other than the one I preferred most.

Here are some variations of the same WordPress theme. It didn’t take much (CSS is awesome), and I even went as far as to allow customization with quick modification of one of the theme files.

Now WordPress authors can use either one of these themes. There’s a fourth book that is coming out: “Breaking Dawn” which I will try to add to this series at a later date.

Download

Okay, so I’ve rambled on enough, Download the WordPress – Twilight Theme v2.0.1.

Notes

BIG FYI: It looks like the comment’s code is missing from this build. I will work on getting that re-implemented tonight. My applogies for the inconvenience!

If you want to modify the graphic to achive either of the variations above, all you have to do is find the file “settings.php” in the Twilight theme folder (includes/settings.php), and edit the following snippet at the very beginning of the file:

// use either "twilight" or "eclipse" or "newmoon" to customize which graphic to show
$THEME_GRAPHIC = 'eclipse';

This theme is built on the same basic framework as my current Lemon Twist Theme. As such, you will likely want to install a few WordPress plugins that work with this theme, so take a look through this README file.

If you are running into errors when applying the theme, it is likely that a plugin is missing and is causing the problem. If you encounter this, check out the “includes” directory and modify any of the offending includes in the “sidebar” sub directory.

Still at a loss? Contact me.

In my previous article “Getting emo with color” I discussed the benefits of understanding the emotional impact of color.

…think about how certain colors can provoke a response. A combination of responses creates an experience. So when we design with color, what we’re really doing is designing an experience. So before you start mashing pixels together in your next design, ask yourself this one question: “What kind of experience do I want to create?” Source: “Getting emo with color”

When you’re designing your WordPress theme, consider what kind of experience you want your readers to have. This goes back to Part 2 of this series where I suggested asking yourself which type of blogger/writer you considered yourself. Knowing that is part of understanding how to develop an experience for your readers. If your articles are verbose then you may want to consider a color scheme that allows better readability over a longer period of time, or if you are brief, then a more flexible color scheme may be considered.

A emotional user experience

Color influences the User Experience in ways you might not immediately consider, and while color affects people in various ways, there are some generally accepted understandings:

• High-energy colors — colors that fall in the warmer part of the spectrum — tend to make readers feel restless. Certain combinations of colors can make readers feel agitated and that reflects in the amount of time they are willing to spent on a given page.
• Low-energy colors — colors which fall in the cooler part of the spectrum — tend to leave readers feeling passive. Again, this is not necessarily a good thing as you are not engaging the reader (let’s hope your content is engaging).
• Neutral colors — colors which are neither warm nor cool — make for a bland experience.

Here are some examples of color schemes to illustrate color temperature. Keep in mind that not all of these sample pallets translate well for a design, but they are a good foundation to build on.

Warm Colors:

Cool Colors:

Neutral Colors:

Note: All samples were taken from COLOURLovers.

Contrast is key

Take a look through SmashingMagazine.com’s collection of WordPress themes. What you’ll notice is that the color palettes fall equally on both sides of the spectrum (with a bare handful that are monochromatic). But what you may not immediately recognize is that each of them employs contrast to a high degree.

Contrast is a tool that works well to deliver focus add tension in a design. Developing contrast is not always as straightforward as designating a big block of white space (literally) as the content area. In order to develop a good balance between your color scheme and necessary contrast for your readers, you need to figure out a few things:

• On average, how long are your articles? The longer the article, the longer it takes for your readers to consume it. In a case like this, low contrast makes it quite difficult for a reader to maintain their attention and adds undue physiological strain.
• Is there functionality or features in your sidebar that are absolutely integral to the reading experience. I’m not only talking about ad space here, I’m also talking about search features, or a list of recent or related articles, links, etc. If the sidebar features are not integral to the reading experience, you may want to make sure they recede into the background through lower contrast.
• What is relevant in terms of content? Do you want your latest article to stand out from the rest? Consider that readers interested in your blog will be visiting through varying methods(RSS, Organic Search, Track-backs, etc.), which means you may want to ensure they get what they are looking for quickly.

Tools of the trade

In my previous article, “Getting emo with color“, I mentioned a few tools that can help you in developing color schemes. Here is a site that I personally love: COLOURLovers.

The samples generated by the community are great to experiment with and it also helps to see what others are doing as well. But be careful, these are color schemes and do not necessarily reflect a real-world application, just an aesthetic.

Fortunately, there are tools out there that can help you in terms of gauging contrast. Take a look at Jon Snook’s “Colour (color) contrast check” article. Jon provides a nifty little utility for evaluating the contrast of your color selections. The example page lists two other utilities which you can play around with as well. 456Bereastreet.com complied a list of additional utilities which are both desktop and web applications.

I can’t tell you which color schemes work best — that is for you to decide; however, I can tell you that regardless of the color scheme you end up with, it is wise to ensure that you provide contrast in the right places for the right reason. Understand your goals and design accordingly.

For this installment, I’m going to focus on another issue that tends to plague web designers — typography.

Before we get started, it’s best that we get a few misconceptions out of the way:

1. Typographic principles for Print Design cannot be applied to Web Design;
2. Good typography requires images;
3. Users only care about content;

For the most part, point three is correct; however, let’s put this into a little more context. Users care about your content — or at least you hope they do if they’re browsing your site — but that does not preclude you from developing a better reading experience for them by applying some straight-forward approaches to typography. I personally hate going to a site only to find that fonts are so tiny on my screen that I have to crank up my font settings in my browser to read it. It is equally annoying if I really want to read the content and am forced to resort to that. It doesn’t hurt to make things a little easier for your readers.

As for the second point, my response to that is typically “know your audience”. I say that because every site is different. Content on one site might require that images be used in place of text, whereas on another site, it is far more important to the audience that content be easily accessible (select, copy, paste, etc). Arguably, it is easier to share text-based content, than it is to share graphical content. Understand who your audience is, and cater to them as appropriate.

Finally, most typographic principles used in print translate beautifully to screen. We have far more advanced tools to develop a better reading experience with CSS-based layouts, which control everything from positioning to formatting. While I don’t want this to turn into an in-depth discussion about usability and web standards, I will say that applying good typographic practices enhances both web usability and accessibility efforts.

Let’s get started.

Issue: Poor reading experience for users

For too long typographic style and its accompanying attention to detail have been overlooked by website designers, particularly in body copy. In years gone by this could have been put down to the technology, but now the web has caught up. The advent of much improved browsers, text rendering and high resolution screens, combine to negate technology as an excuse. Source: webtypography.net

I could not have said it any better.

When it comes to developing a good reading experience for your users, typography is an important aspect that needs as much consideration as colour and layout. A good reading experience should leave your users free to do one thing: read. If you can present your content in a way that makes it both easy to read, and requires less from the user than scrolling, you’ve accomplished what many websites fail to do.

Good typography in your design opens up your layout and makes a normally “grey” page appear friendly and light.

Something to think about:

It is inevitable that you will come across older sites — and even new websites — which still seek to compact as much copywriting into a given area as possible. It is not uncommon to hear feedback along the lines of “keep the content above the fold”; every time someone must say this, a kitten dies somewhere. I counter that kind of feedback with this. With current web standards, there is no harm in scrolling a page. It is a natural browsing behaviour; again, this is a good case where it pays to know your audience.

Density or “Typographic Colour”

First off, you need to ask yourself what kind of blogger you are. Are you the type of blogger that publishes short paragraphs with a smattering of links? Are you the type of blogger that prefers to drop lots of images and media with brief explanations? Or are you a copious writer given to generous use of copy, media and links?

If you can identify what kind of writer you are, then you’re half way to understanding your audience. People visit your blog for any number of reasons, but the foremost amongst those reasons is your content. They like what you have to say, what you have to show them, and the information you can point them to.

For the purposes of this article, let’s assume you’re like me — a copious writer. You love your words and your blog is the perfect place to share them.

Given the assumption, here are a few considerations:

1. Large amounts of copy on a screen or piece of paper turn your normal white space in a big grey mass. In traditional typography we call this “typographic colour”. More specifically this is the density of your paragraphs in relation to the space you have given the paragraphs. You can lighten things up by adjusting the “leading” (line-height in CSS), and the “Kerning” (letter-spacing in CSS).
2. Colour as a tool plays a much more important (though subtle) role in good typographic design. You have many colours to choose from, but when it comes to presenting content that is intended to be read, contrast between the background and the type is essential. The better the contrast, the less work is required of the reader to focus and interpret what is on screen. Pick colours that are harmonious with your overall design, but also have a high-degree of contrast. This does not mean you have to stick to black and white; as long as the colour has enough contrast to it, you should be fine. “Cooler” colours (colour temperature, not “cool factor”) for type work best across most screens.
3. The typeface, its size, its leading and kerning all affect the readability of your content. Choose a typeface and set its properties to ensure that it is legible. I cannot stress this aspect enough. I have had one too many debates with designers who transition from Print to Web, arguing that 9pt to 10pt type is more than sufficient for on-screen legibility (this is one of those exceptions where print and web typographic principles do not marry so well). I end these long-winded debates with this consideration: in contemporary graphic design, a designer must design for the medium. The same holds true for web designers. We have to design for the medium, and in our case the medium is the screen. Here is an article that also talks about adjusting typography for the web. It also covers parts of the previous discussion in relation to the column measure.

Here are some examples of density, and how typographic control can affect the legibility of your body copy:

You can see from the thumbnails how the leading affects the density of copy on the page. The tighter the leading (and other type properties) the more dense a single paragraph appears to a reader.

Putting it into practice

Spend the time and go through the motions of playing around with typographic colour in your design application, or if you prefer to deal with your typography in CSS you can use tools like Font Tester or TypeTester. The benefit of these online tools is that you are very quickly able to see the results of your tests as they appear on screen — in a browsing environment. The more time you spend on determining your typographic styles in the design phase of creating a WordPress theme, the better off you will be later in the development process.

Design for the medium

Keep in mind that for web, it is easier to scale back than it is to scale up. We don’t have the restrictions of paper or other physical media — we do have to contend with other issues (we’ll cover that later), but for the most part you’re better off starting larger at first and scaling back if you have to.

Here are some sites that are some examples of web typography that illustrate the design principles I have been talking about in this article:

• http://www.clearleft.com/about/
• http://www.simplebits.com/
• http://www.whatdoiknow.org/
• http://slideshowpro.net/

Some Considerations:

Feedback is always nice to have. If possible, solicit some of your readers about their thoughts on your typographic choices, but remember to put your questions into the proper context:

• “Is it easier to read my articles if I do this or that?”
• “Does the page feel lighter to you if I chose this colour or that colour?”
• “Can you scan the page quickly and find what you need?”

Further Reading:

“The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web” is a site that I have found infinitely useful as a reference and as a sounding board for decisions I make in terms of my typographic design. I encourage anyone who has an interest in web typography to read it — it’s not a long read — quite brief in fact. Keep in mind that as a designer, you the final call on decisions — don’t get caught up in the stress of “I have to adhere strictly to the rules or my design sucks”. Instead, think about your audience. Put yourself in their shoes and consider what works best for them in regards to your content.

The reality is that most older WordPress themes (older than v2.x) can be upgraded to be compatible with newer versions of the WordPress software, but it does take a little effort to figure out what works and what doesn’t — sometimes creating a new theme is far more attractive than having to parse through old code. I hate having to revisit old code — yes, I am one of those people — but since I’m developing a theme that I want to share with people, I want to ensure they get the best out of what I can develop. In order to do that I needed to make sure my WordPress themes are as future proof and flexible as I can make them.

For the first part in this series, I’m going to focus on the "K.I.S.S" principle.

Now, I know there are articles galore which expound on this principle, but when it comes to WordPress or most weblog systems, designers tend to throw it right out the window. Complexity does not always equate to good visual design.

To kick off this series, I’m going to focus on a fundamental design problem, which ultimately compounds other issues later on in the development process.

Issue: Inconsistent "Column Measure" and the visual "Grid":

This is a design issue which plagues the majority of designers. Column measures form the foundation for your design "grid". The implied "grid" lends harmony to your layout and an invisible structure — a framework — you can use to communicate visual priorities of content and components on a page. There is no hard and fast rule that says you should always use one, two, three or four column layouts. It really comes down to what you need to illustrate the content and functionality on your pages without pushing it to the point of clutter.

Understanding the column measure

In short, a column measure refers to the width of "continuous text". This is most evident in magazine and newspapers where the ability to flow text into multiple columns is possible. With current development standards and web-technology this is not such an easy thing to do (it’s possible with a lot of hacking). However this does not preclude you as a designer from developing a rough column measure to aid in your layout.

Note: What is also handy (and we’ll talk about this in later articles), is the typographic settings derived from this measure. Here is a good article explaining "column measure".

Designing your "Column Measure"

The old carpenter’s adage "Measure twice. Cut once" holds true for design on so many different levels. In the case of WordPress theme design — determine your column measures first.

When you first run Photoshop (or whichever program you prefer), fight the urge to start throwing pixels onto your canvas. Instead, focus on setting out your guides. Here is a sample of the column guides I typically start with all my web-layouts:

The darker grey areas indicate where content would flow and the lighter grey areas indicate margins or padding you may wish to apply. I stick to a 20px padding practice (10px on the left and right side). The space remaining provides your gutters. The pink rules between columns indicate possible borders.

In terms of designing the column measure, I tend vary my widths anywhere between 250px to 300px — this typically lends a fair amount of space for design elements and copy, as well as enough room for extra white-space where possible.

A few things you may notice about the column sample:

• Between all three columns, I allot for a 1px border (the pink rules). I do this because it is a pain to have to factor in borders in the design after you’ve committed to your column widths. This may seem odd at first because the combined column widths end up being 601px and 902px respectively — naturally these aren’t numbers you expect to see, but these numbers end up giving you better control when you want to divide the columns.
• The columns loosely follow the CSS box model. This is vitally important if you’re designing for web standards. Being able to foresee ahead of time, how the box model affects a layout is a handy tool, not to mention that it takes the guess-work out determining margins and padding for your divs. The remaining space after any margins or padding is 280px — that’s a pretty decent amount of space to put towards content or blocks of functionality like categories, bookmarks, search boxes, etc.
• I allot a minimum of 10px outside of the layout for effects like drop shadows and such. My "Lemon Twist" theme is a good example of where that extra little space comes in handy.

Your columns are just vertical spaces which you can use to flow your content into. You can bridge or merge those columns, thereby creating interesting design elements; however, don’t let the columns restrict you — the grid that is derived from this is a very helpful tool which allows you to create designs such as what you might see with the following sites:

• http://www.ndesign-studio.com/
• http://www.snook.ca/jonathan/
• http://archgfx.net/blog/2007/geek/blogging/bus-full-of-hippies-for-wordpress (see screenshot)
• http://www.lifespy.com/2007/illacrimo-theme-release/ (see screenshot)

Putting it into practice:

Once you have your columns roughed out, start playing with blocks rather than fully fleshed out designs. With building blocks you alleviate the complications of the aesthetic, giving you much better focus on of proportion, balance, flow and tension.

Bridge your columns — which design elements might benefit from doing this? What happens when you swap the position of your sidebar and your reading area. If advertising is a feature of your weblog, where is it most effective to generate clicks and views? Does your navigation work best in a sidebar or at the top?

Play around with the layouts. When you get to a point where you’ve blocked out your layout, them dive into design.

Things to consider:

Remember, the primary purpose of a weblog is for people to read — I know there are some folks out there who may feel otherwise; however, the majority of people visiting your weblog are there to find content, read it, and move on (or share it, but I’ll save that for later). Whatever you can do in your design to accommodate that most basic of requirements, the better.

Here are some questions that may help you:

1. Think about how many columns you really need to layout your content — can you simplify?
2. What are you columns being used for — articles, advertising, photos, etc.?
3. Are there going to be exceptions to the layout that might affect your column structure, such as banners, forms, long headlines, embedded media, etc.?
4. As a reader, do you prefer to have a wide reading column, or a narrow one?

Try to answer as many of those questions before hand and avoid some of the design pitfalls later.

Ultimately the content and the functionality are up to you. By keeping most of these things in mind you will make it far easier to maintain the integrity of your design as well as work to make it future-proof.

Further Reading:

• http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/06/19/web-typography-column-widths/
• http://webtypography.net/Rhythm_and_Proportion/Horizontal_Motion/2.1.2/

Perhaps the most visible addition to the theme is the sidebar where I’ve added box-toggling features through jQuery, as well as reformatted the “Recent Comments” box so the whole item is clickable.

Also, I’ve incorporated a simple feature into the comments display which allows you to quote any of the comments — there are some minor tweaks I am thinking of making to it, but it is functional and I’d like to hear what others may think of it.

I’m sure there are a half dozen other features that I’m probably forgetting to mention, but then again, most of the updates are code-based rather than design-based. I will release a build of this theme when I feel that I’ve tested it out with a live audience and tweaked the new features.

Let me know what you think!

UPDATE: As promised, I’m releasing Lemon Twist v2.0.36 theme. This is a significant update to the 1.5 and the 2.0 versions, the most current of which you see here. I’ve handled the majority of critical fixes and tweaked a number of IE6 specific bugs (not including [its lack of decent] PNG support). Here are some of the features that are available with this theme release:

• Code refactoring – I’ve made some significant improvements over how portions of the page are structure, as well as cleaning up the directory structure. You will find the root directory of this theme free of all the extraneous files such as the sidebar includes. All of the sidebar includes, style sheets, images, and JavaScript libraries are now contained in an include directory.
• Sidebar boxes now include a toggle feature to expand and collapse them — this is intended to give users some basic, temporary control over the layout. Future updates will include some persistence for the last state of each box.
• Comments — the comments portion of this theme has been modified to display the comment form at the bottom of the comments stack rather than as a sidebar box. An additional feature — the “Commentors on this Post” box — was created as a means to quickly jump to a particular comment on the page or see who has commented at a glance. Also, as I’ve mentioned earlier, there is now a feature to allow you to quote a particular comment; the implementation is rudimentary at the moment, but I will extend it further if it proves useful.

Please let me know if you find bugs and such — leave a report on this post — and I will add it to my todo list

I hope that everyone finds this new theme fun to work with as much as I have enjoyed creating it!

Download Lemon Twist v2.5 here.

Not surprisingly, the WordPress community was already developing methods to handle the browsing experience on the iPod/iPhone, resulting in a number of plug-ins such as: iWPhone and WPhone.

I chose to go with iWPhone as my plug-in of choice as it was pretty straight forward to implement and I took the liberty of making one small mod to it. iWPhone allows iPod/iPhone visitors to see an optimized version of your blog theme which is better suited for the kind of browsing experience it delivers. Here are some screenshots from my dev site (you will need to view my blog through your iPod/iPhone in order to see what it looks like live.

There are a few caveats when it comes to creating content for a iPod/iPhone WordPress theme, and two of the biggest gottachs are:

• Length of your content;
• Size of your images/media;

The first point isn’t an issue if you’re not the type to write copious content; however the second point is a stickler for all writers. When it comes to including media in your blog such as images and embedded video (that’s another issue), you have to have a method for dealing with the sizes intended for larger screens. Ideally, you have about 320px to work with, less if you like to use margins like I do. the iWPhone theme comes with a nifty little bit of JavaScript that goes through your markup and resizes all of your images. I have yet to extend it for other media (hopefully future-proofing it for when the flash plug-in becomes available). But other than those two points, there really isn’t all that much to hold you back from creating decent themes for the iPod/iPhone.

For some further reading on creating content for the iPod/iPhone, check out the Apple Developer Connection – iPhone Dev Center, and a little bi of “light” reading at the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines wiki.

This theme is quite dear to me as it’s been something I’ve tweaked and adjusted until it’s as perfect as I can manage — I hope that you can all enjoy using it as much as I have enjoyed putting it together. I’ve gotten quite a few compliments for this theme and it’s been listed a few times on sites like SmashingMagazine.com.

I’ve also released the Photoshop source files (*.PSD) for the main theme along with a handful of the additional components you might need for other pages such as the search results (which has a slightly different style for the results). Also, I’ve released the template for the comments area — this will give you the opportunity to modify it as you see if.

For details about the theme and instructions on installing it, check out the readme file. Also, please consult the plug-ins list before posting support requests. Here are some direct links to the theme and source files:

Download farfromfearless Lemon Twist v1.5 Theme
Download farfromfearless Lemon Twist v1.5 Source Files
View the ReadMe file here.

In any case, please feel free to use this theme for your blogs; as always, if you choose to modify this theme in any way, I would appreciate it if you could keep my credits in the stylesheet and a link in the footer. I still have plans to release my own colour modifications of the theme, and if you beat me to it, I would love to see what you come up with!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I have to admit that I was a little surprised as I felt my current theme was much more tame than my first version, and while I really love my current theme, I am looking forward once more to doing another version. I’ve been quite strict with myself on how often I change the design — fighting the urge to redesign every couple months is challenging — and so I don’t expect to do another theme until after the Christmas Holidays. But that doesn’t preclude me from thinking about doing it, or better yet, designing it in my head ( *wink* ).

In any case, here are a couple more links to other mentions on Smashing Magazine:

1. 8 Fresh WordPress Themes
2. CSS-Based Navigation Menus (Modern Solutions)

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Smashing Magazine:

Founded in September 2006, Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information for designers and web-developers. Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends and techniques in web-development – clearly, precisely and regularly. We don’t try to convince you with the quantity, but with the quality of the information we present. That’s what makes us different. In fact, we smash you with the information which will make your life easier. Really. SmashingMagazine.com – About Us

P.S. I have a Christmas present planned for the design community — find out in December.

1. Clean Mark-up to support SEO;
2. Greater focus on legibility of written content;
3. Hack-free – installable theme without the need to tweak the WordPress core;

In any case, I feel that Lemon Twist accomplishes those design and development goals. While I was tempted to deviate greatly from my earlier theme, I wanted to ensure that there was some continuity between themes and each new release of this series will appear as an evolution of a concept rather than a scrap-and-rebuild exercise. On a side note, I am going to release this theme in three colors schemes according to some of my favourite ice-creams:

1. Brown/Orange/White – Orange Chocolate;
2. Brown/Pink/Vanilla – Neapolitan;
3. Red/White/Orange – Strawberry;

I have done my best (thanks to Jon Snook for the input) to ensure that the mark-up for this theme is symmetrically correct, compliant and degrades gracefully. As a forewarning to those viewing this theme – it does make heavy use of PNG’s (almost exclusively) – all of which I am currently optimizing for IE and other browsers. I spent a considerable amount of time attempting to develop this theme using traditional image formats, however they did not lend well to what I wanted to accomplish with this design. Long live PNG’s.

Unlike my previous theme, I will not be releasing it to the public until it is in a satisfactory state – meaning bug-free, and truly compliant.

In the mean time, bear with my while I setup my photo-gallery and other widgets.