It took me a few days and several complete redos of the entire design, but I think I’m finally content with this new theme. I call it Retro-fitted because the colors are a kind of throwback to some past that I certainly didn’t live in.

Giving credit where credit is due

My original design for this was largely based off WordPress with its new design and the Movable Type Blog (Yes, I realize we’re at constant war with the other blogging system). I got my blue colors from the Movable type design and the reddish color from the WordPress design.

I had originally planned to go very open with the theme because I’m a big fan of Theme Shaper’s current theme. I like Ian’s my-design-won’t-get-in-your-way layout. I ultimately decided against the open layout and enclosed the content area. However, I still kept the front page’s fairly big post title font size, which puts a lot more focus on content.

Last — not anywhere near least — Smashing Magazine. Their recent article on the celebration of vintage and retro design made me completely rethink what I wanted to do with the theme. And to think I almost missed this article because I was working on the redesign. Luckily, I took a break and read through some posts from my feed reader and happened to catch the article.

More thoughts about the design

Gravatars
I don’t know how I ever lived without them. After a day or so of using them, then looking at my own blog, I just didn’t want to comment. It wasn’t any fun.

Author highlighting
You’ll also notice that I’ve added author highlighting to the comment section, so you’ll always be able to pick out my comments quickly because they’ll look a little different.

Sidebar
I’m not sure whether I’m happy with the sidebar just yet. I could probably work on it a few more days and get something more suitable. But, I might work on it a few more days and get nowhere.

Internet Explorer still sucks
Especially IE6. Really, the only problem I had with IE6 was PNG transparency issues. If only everybody would get off that browser, I wouldn’t have to support it with my designs.

Let me know what you think

Do you like it? Hate it?

Overall, I’m happy with it because I needed something fresh. Blogging can sometimes get boring, so we need to spruce up our sites once in a while. I wanted to go with something lighter and a bit more fun. I think I at least accomplished that.

I haven’t ported the theme over to the forums yet. Look for that in the next few days. Once that’s done, you all can look for some more of your regularly scheduled WordPress stuff.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a good blog design and when to release that design to the world. I’ve ultimatley concluded that I have no good answer for that, but I’ll try to explain my process.

These are just some observations I’ve made about designing WordPress themes.

Designs are never foolproof:

The Douglas Adams quotation above is something every designer should think about. No matter how perfect, no matter what miniscule details you’ve added, there’s always someone that’s going to screw it up for you. Do you think MySpace profiles always looked that ugly?

Designs are never “foolproof,” but some of us try anyway.

I’m constantly trying to think of every situation, every widget, every plugin, or other little piece of Internet matter that I might find on someone’s blog, and I always come across something I haven’t seen before. That little widget that breaks my beautiful theme, but the blogger keeps it on their site anyway.

We can never design for everyone or everything. We can only hope to develop something that will work in every browser, screen resolution, and connection speed.

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” – Walt Disney

We design for the people, right? I’ve been fortunate enough in the last couple of months to have my themes used by many people and in some very creative ways.

Why am I providing you with this information?

To let you know that a designer’s work is for others. When developing a theme, I always think about how the user will use that theme, and we know from our good buddy Walt Disney that getting people to use your theme is your goal. Douglas Adams tells us that they will ultimately destroy it in some way.

How do we design for “the ingenuity of complete fools”?

I let my users be my lab rats. They’re the best test subjects when it comes to debugging your theme. The first week of any free theme release is a bug-squashing week for me. I let the users do all the testing, and I fix things.

The best way to do this is to release your theme on the weekend to a handful of users, while letting them sort your bugs out. Then, as every theme designer should know by now, release your theme before Weblog Tools Collection updates its early-week theme releases. By then, maybe you’ve sorted out a few of the bugs.

What? Release my themes with bugs?

Well, not bugs that you know about. The point I’m trying to make here is that you must eventually quit testing and release your theme to the world. I know most theme designers have OCD of some sort, but it’s best to keep that in check.

“Delay always breeds danger and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.” – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

There are always bugs, even if they’ve been created by “the ingenuity of complete fools” and not you. Don’t delay your design release because of potential problems. Release it when you’ve completed the project.

Improving your theme:

The reason I make my first week a bug-squashing week is because I know there are things I’ll want to change. There are always ways to improve the design. But, if we procrastinate on the release of the theme based on the assumption that we can still improve it, then we’ll never release the theme.

“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing, layout, processes, and procedures.” – Tom Peters

If you want to improve your theme, before or after its initial release, then simplify it. Don’t add new features that make things more complicated. One of the reasons I updated my Structure theme after two days was because I wanted to simplify it for the user.

Don’t make the mistake of complicating your design. We should value simplicity above all else in design. People like simplicity.

Creating a beautiful canvas on the Web:

“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” – Henry David Thoreau

If anyone would have made a great theme designer, it might have been Henry Davd Thoreau. The “atmosphere and medium through which we look” is the Web. It is our duty, if we want to be great designers, “to affect the quality” of the online world.

Final thoughts:

Another great quote I want to leave you with that applies to design is about engineering, but directly applies to theme design.

The engineer’s first problem in any design situation is to discover what the problem really is.” – Unknown

Before you go off and decide to create the next “great” theme, make sure you take a view of the WordPress theme landscape. What’s needed? What hasn’t been done before? What could you do better?

($solving_problems == $innovation && $innovation == $great_theme_design)

Maybe that last bit was uber-geeky, but the point is that you must provide something that’s in need or create something that people will want to need.

I’m not sure how well this post flows, but I wanted to simply let my thoughts flow for one post. What do you think makes a great WordPress theme design? What should be added to this list of things? Better yet, what are you doing to make your themes better? How are you innovating?

I’m a tortured artist without vitality.
Color has lost its hue, it’s only darkness.
I’m a fallen angel without a paradise.
Eden has lost its innocence and beauty.
I exist only through blank pages of an empty void consumed only by meaningless matter.

Okay, there’s a little bit of my dark tortured soul. Now that I got that out of my system…
Oh, I cooked up another skin. It’s one of Sophia Bush from One Tree Hill.

As for the rest of my life, well, it’s back to work tomorrow with the same old monotonous crap that completely devours every last bit of me and leaves only emptiness.

I get this feeling, sometimes, that life is just passing me by. There’s so many things I would like to do within my lifetime. I think a lot of it is just that whole seeing-young-celebs-become-famous-before-I-do-thing. Even still, I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything in the last few years. Back when I was in high school I was on the fast track to becoming somebody, doing something with my life. Now, I’m just sitting here, typing. Okay, sitting here doing less than that most of the time. Watching television, playing video games, fixing up my website, or just staring into space. I could go on all night about this, and eventually try to rationalize the point to the universe, coming up with a blank mind and nothing but nothingness to show for it.

Anyways, I’ve been updating the site a bit. I got a new theme/design/skin (whatever you’d like to call it). It’s another Alyson Michalka skin. It’s not quite finished just yet…Or I may be…I haven’t totally decided…I’ll probably do some more work on it. I’ve just spent way to much time on it so far. I tried to make a fluid 2-column layout, and that didn’t pan out. That’s what actually took so much time. Everything just seems so bland. Using skins messes up my design ideas, sometimes. Mostly because all the pages are gutted-out to the bare essentials. Actually, it’s just me, I still have a way to go in learning CSS. And this is coming at a time when I thought I’d almost mastered it. Well, was I wrong? There’s so much more to it than I had known.

Well…It seems that the day is coming to another end, especially considering that I needed to be in bed 2 1/2 hours ago.
Words of Wisdom: Don’t let life just go by. Take advantage of opportunities, even ones that might not seem so interesting at the moment. And don’t spend too much time thinking about the past, the ups or downs, and seize those moments that you have now.