Let me introduce you to THiCK. The WooThemes guys gave me free reign on all fronts, with only a small list of specifications to meet – all of which I would have included anyhow. So really, THiCK is pretty damn close to what I would have produced had this been my own project.

THiCK is a beast of a theme! It’s catered towards personal blog authors and packs a pile of features right out of the box, thanks to a number of a custom widgets created by the team at WooThemes. From a design standpoint, it’s extremely flexible. There are 2 main styles (clean and grunge) and a main colour scheme for each (light and dark). From there, you can choose from 5 variant colour schemes that change headings and links through-out the blog. There’s also 2 different header layouts that can be selected from the admin. THiCK is built on the 960 Grid System and the original PSDs are included in the bundle, so customizing further should be a breeze.

I’d like to thank the guys at WooThemes for the opportunity to finally get around to something I’ve pushed to the back-burner far too many times. It was an absolute pleasure working with them over the course of our 3 week stint, and something I would recommend to any fellow designers who might be curious to how a collaboration like this would work.

And finally, my involvement in this project was on the design and XHTML/CSS. WordPress development was handled entirely by WooThemes. I haven’t actually got my hands on the finished product, and am quite curious to see how they handled things like the lifestream and media streams. I should also point out that I’ve noticed a couple minor CSS bugs since I handed the templates off. I’ve already started a conversation with Adii on this topic and will see about getting them sorted out ASAP.

I’m very interested to hear what people have to say about the theme in general, and how it’s been released (via WooThemes). Do you think this is something I should consider doing on a regular basis?

Coming Up With Something Different

Since I had been sporting the same layout and design for so long, I wanted to really switch things up and go drastically different. At the same time, I wanted to maintain the image that people have come to know me for. My initial goals were…

• Anything but black. Preferably dark text on light background. Stick with pink as main accent colour.
• No visual horizontal division. Attempt vertical division.
• Come up with new section heading/sub-heading treatment and/or placement.

I managed to come up with a pretty unique layout with my first wireframe. The idea with the ideas, was that they would be mini-tabs along the left margin. Clicking them would push the entire site to the right, revealing a tray that contains all of the headings and descriptive text. While I thought this was a great concept and would raise some eyebrows, I knew it would be a nightmare for older and lower spec machines. Not to mention, some people might not even notice them and wonder what all of the content actually was. In short, hiding the headings by default wasn’t the greatest idea.

My second wireframe corrected this potential issue by dumping the headings in a gutter off to the right. Having them as part of the main container meant I had less space for content, so some rearranging took place.

Doing Away With Black

I assume 2 things come to mind when people think of my old design – grunge and black. All along, my intentions were to stick with the grunge theme, but I definitely wanted to move away from dark colours primarily. I started working with beige and light browns, and after much tinkering with adjustment layers, settled on a colour scheme.

For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what to do with the header and footer. I wanted to have the headings separated from the content area visually, but that gutter would be made wider for the article layout where it would be re-purposed as the sidebar. I had tried stretching the header and footer from edge-to-edge, but didn’t like the “T” shape it produced. After much fiddling, I decided to restrict the entire site in a container.

Back to Freelance

You may have noticed that there was no place for my design work on the homepage in the previous mocks. Up until March of this year, I had been working for a design studio and wasn’t able for hire. When I made my return to the freelance world, I revisited the homepage and put in a prominent space to promote my work.

It wasn’t long before I overhauled the design section to make it even more prominent. At the same time, I came up with the idea of separating blog and design related items in the main navigation. With the exception of the header, I was really happy with how things had come together and considered the homepage complete.

So Much For Change

Over the past year or so, I’ve taken a liking to brown. I own some brown clothes, and Deanna picked up this great set of luggage that’s brown with white and pink lining. I absolutely loved that combination and decided to give it a go. I posted a side-by-side comparison on Flickr to get some perspective from my peers in the field, and see which people were favouring. Some great points were raised and I decided to go with the brown.

Last Minute Decisions

One thing I was never crazy about was the length of the homepage. As much as I liked giving my readers a place on the homepage (recent comments), it was something I could do without. At the same time, I came up with idea of the thought bubble for my latest Twitter update, so that was one less thing adding length to the page. As I mentioned before, I wasn’t stoked on the header – primarily the nav and the “logo”. So I took another stab at it and came up with something much better.

The last thing to change before I started building the site out was the primary colours for each section. I had kept the colours from my previous design, but they were just too stark against the brown.

And that’s it. The final mock was locked down and I moved onto the XHTML/CSS phase.

What Took So Long?

When I first decided that it was time to retire the old, trusty design, I was working on it in my spare time at a casual rate. Obviously, there’s no hard deadline when I’m working on my own stuff, and since I was doing the bulk of the work in my spare time, progress was slow at best. Right when I started making good headway, Addison joined our world and my redesign took a backseat. From that point, my spare time has dwindled and I found myself preferring to sit on the couch with my feet up rather than return to my desk to work when I had some time to myself. But about a month ago, I lit a fire under my own ass and promised myself I would get it done by mid-September. Here we are, about 3 weeks shy of my self imposed deadline, and while the site isn’t everything I had planned it to be, the bulk of the work is done.

Phases

If you were to take a look at my brainstorming notes, you would see a lot of things that didn’t make it, in what I’m calling Phase 1. I came to the realization that if I were to pack everything that I had planned for my redesign into a single release, it would be months before it would be completed. So instead I’ve opted for phases. Phase 1 being the blog overhaul. Phase 2 will focus on the design section, which I have big plans for.

Tried and True

While I was mocking this new design, I focused first on the homepage. When it came time to mock the article layout, I hit a roadblock. I ended up with half a dozen wireframes, but nothing that really sat well, so I decided to stick with what works. As you’ll notice, the article layout is pretty much the same as my previous design, with extra bits of content sprinkled through-out.

Take a Look Around

I was going to list all of the new additions and major revisions, but I’ll leave them for you to find. So please, take a few minutes and click around. Be sure to drop a comment and let me know what you think.

I don’t feel bad about this by any means. I’m not saving lives or anything here. But I really do wish I could put more time into these projects to freshen them up and get people talking about them again.

While I’m not there yet, eventually I will fully have my evenings and weekends to myself. I’ve put in a solid 2 weeks of full time work with Graphics.net already, but I still have a few loose ends to tie up from some lingering freelance projects. Once everything is fully out of the way, I have a to-do list to get to. And it looks something like this…

FeedIcons.com

First and foremost, I have to do something with FeedIcons.com. I know it serves its purpose and doesn’t really need anything more. But it feels very “tacked on” to me and I would like to at least clean it up. It generates a fair bit of revenue each month from the single AdSense leaderboard, which is nothing to complain about, but I know I could double or triple that income pretty easily. So that’s what I am aiming to do.

• Revise layout and design to fit 3 AdSense ads comfortably. Revisit last design mock from August 8, 2006.
• Create colour packs – themed zip packages of various coloured icons.
• Write XHTML/CSS code snippets for easy copy-and-paste use.

Dashboard Themes

While I’m crazy stoked the success Dashboard Themes has seen in its short lifespan, there are a couple areas that have been disappointing. Getting advertising has been a tough task, but I haven’t been willing to put too much time into preparing reports, etc. that some of the bigger potential partners have been interested in. Donations have slowed to a once every 3 or 4 weeks trickle and we still haven’t paid off our start-up expenses. All expenses have been paid directly out of pocket. AdSense and Amazon referrals have proved basically useless on this site.

• Institute a donation schedule where periodic goals must be met to keep the site a-float. If the donation schedule proves successful…
• Revise design and layout. Remove all advertising and streamline existing content.
• Introduce “new hotness” donation goals for new features. Once a goal is met, a new feature will be rolled out.

My Blog

While it’s last on my list, it’s going to receive the most love. This November marks the 2 year anniversary of this layout. The design has seen a couple revisions, but nothing big enough to call it a completely different design. On May 2, 2007 I finalized the homepage wireframe, but I haven’t touched it since. I have tons of ideas and a pretty clear vision of where I want to go visually, but it’s going to have to wait. I fear that I’ll be planning this out for some time as well, but my ultimate goal is to re-launch my blog before November 1 of this year. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to reveal anything on my to-do list at this point. Sorry!

When the time comes, I will be hiring a few folks to help me make this blog something to talk about. Both visually and technically. And for those wondering – I may still release my current design as a WordPress theme. Keyword – may.

I’m Pretty Sure the HD Movie Format War is Over

A couple weeks ago I picked up the Xbox 360 HD DVD player – actually, what I bought was the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel. But the wheel itself was off-centered by about 10 degrees, which didn’t render it useless, just sucky. I did a quick Google and found that it’s a pretty common issue and read tales of people going through 2 or 3 wheels before getting one that wasn’t broken right out of the box. I said to hell with that noise and got my money back. I thought it would be a good idea to ignore my better judgement (that being to stay away from HD DVD and Blu-ray until their is a clear winner of the format war) and pick up the HD DVD player add-on.

There’s nothing wrong with the player – in fact, it’s great! I love the fact that you don’t have to remove game discs to watch a movie as you end up with a dedicated drive for each. And of course, HD movies look fantastic! But there’s only one local shop within reasonable driving distance that rents them (which happens to be a Blockbuster) and Rogers VideoDirect service sucks for HD movies as they seem to have very limited supply.

Then the news came that Blockbuster are stocking their 1,450 locations with Blu-ray and only carrying HD DVD at the 250 outlets that currently have them. That is an absolutely massive blow to HD DVD and unless a rival video rental service does the complete opposite and dumps Blu-ray, I don’t see HD DVD recovering from this. The second I read that headline, I was filled with anger, which was fully directed back at myself for putting myself in the middle of this stupid format war in the first place. Fuck it! I’m selling my HD DVD player.

The Wii Was a Massive Waste of Money

Xbox 360 was the first console I bought within a year of being released since NES. I picked up my Xbox 360 in early March of 2006, just 4 months after its release. Since then, there’s barely been a day gone by that I haven’t played it or at least turned it on to use it for other purposes (movies or music). The Wii on the other hand, has been a complete waste of money at this point. The only time it sees any action is if someone comes over who hasn’t played one before. Even my 8 year-old daughter has grown tired of it.

There’s still nothing good to play! There are hardly any exclusives and the games that are available on other platforms are best played on them. Out of the last 10 games to be reviewed at GameSpot (excluding VC games, it would have been a lot lower had I counted those), the highest received a 7.5. Many of which are cited as having bad control schemes – and what does the Wii have if not a unique control scheme? Terrible graphics, extremely limited support for widescreen resolutions and no multiplayer. Whoo! From the last 2 Wii games reviewed – “…the gamepad-to-Wii Remote transition has made this lackluster game play even worse.” “…but the Wii control scheme isn’t ideal.” Just when I thought we were out of the drought and Mario Party 8 hit, it proved to be just more of the same. Hannah (daughter) has been a big fan of the Mario Party series since number 5 – I rented Mario Party 8 for her and she played it for a total of 1 hour out of the 5 days we had it. Well, I guess there’s still hope for Super Smash Bros Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3. Those games better be good.

Giving Up on Myself as a Freelancer

At the beginning of March I wrote about my departure from the freelance world as I joined the team at the newly formed Graphics.net. Full time status only lasted about a month as I wasn’t thrilled on the work I was doing which was mostly due to the company being so fresh and things being put into place as the days went by. I decided to go back to freelance part time and continue to work with Gnet in the afternoon. Knowing full well that I would be struggling with the workload of only having 4 hours a day to dedicate to freelance, I asked for some help. The response was tremendous and I received more help than I could even make use of. The problem there, was managing subcontractors and coordinating workflow took far longer than I had anticipated. I found myself doing more managing than “working” which resulted in a pretty significant back-up, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid.

A couple months in, I was feeling so worn out. Buried under a pile of work and emails that never seemed to stop coming. Just when I was discussing my next move with my wife, the bossman at Gnet made me another full time offer. This time, going into great detail on the work I’ll be doing and role(s) I’ll be fulfilling with them. And of course, the proposed wage is a significant increase over what I’m making freelancing, so I decided to give it another go.

I’m definitely going to miss the nature of the work I’ve been doing as a freelancer, along with some of the people I’ve worked closely with over the past year or so. I’ve actually still got a few freelance projects that are yet to roll out that I’m really excited about – I feel a couple of them are my best work to date, so be sure to watch out for those. But that’s not to say the work I’m doing at Gnet sucks. For the most part, the work is a little different as we’re catering to business as apposed to the individuals that I normally work for.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I totally sucked at handling everything that is required of a freelancer. Had I allotted more time for managing leads, networking with other freelancers, handling money and all that business type stuff, I would have been able to carry on doing my own thing as a one-man-show. But that’s not the case, so here I am, moving on…

Disorganized layers leaves people (and yourself, for that matter) digging in frustration to find what they’re looking for which only slows down the entire process. By naming layers, using folders and colours, it’s very easy to keep things in order.

Name Your Layers

While it’s not imperative that every single layer has a unique name. Anything significant and not rightly obvious should be named. It’s easiest to keep on top of layer naming by immediately setting a name once you’ve finished with the layer you’re working on.

Use Folders for Grouping

In the last couple of versions of Photoshop, we’ve been able to embed folders in the layers palette. This helps to take organization a step further than ever before. Now it’s possible to group layers together in a folder and even group folders inside a parent folder.

A good example of a solid folder structure would be the header of a site. Make a top level folder called “header” and put sub-folders inside for “nav”, “search”, “newsletter”, etc.

Colour Coding

Probably the least common method of organizing the layers palette is assigning colours to folders and individual layers. But used wisely, can be very effective. One could easily establish their own colour scheme that gets carried across each PSD they work on.

For example: Header elements are red. Main content is orange. Sidebar is yellow, etc.

I’m sure for some, this will seem all too obvious and hardly beneficial. To those people, I owe a high-five if we ever meet in the real world.

You can read more on The Why, Who and How on the site itself. And be sure to check out the FAQ if that doesn’t cover it.

We’re not 100% where we’d like to be, but we’re confident with the point we’re at and have decided to go live with the site today and roll out the features that missed the boat in the coming weeks. Most of these features are enhancements to existing areas of the site, but a few new things are in the queue as well. All in all, I feel that the site is very strong as it stands today and I’m quite proud our of accomplishment.

If you like what we’ve done here, please help spread the word via your favourite social bookmarking-type site and other usual avenues. We’re not entirely sure how the server will hold up if there’s a big burst of traffic, but hopefully we’ll get to test that out soon.

And finally, we’re asking for donations to help cover expenses of getting the site online until we get some advertisers on board. If you find the site useful and could spare a buck or two, we’d greatly appreciate it.

So there it is, the project I’ve had under my hat and hinting at for weeks now. Feels good to have it off the ground and it’s nice to have actually done something to contribute to a solution of a problem that’s been driving Xbox 360 owners mad since launch.

I only made a few sizes, all of which are 16:10 resolutions.

• 2560×1600
• 1920×1200
• 1680×1050
• 1440×900
• 1280×800

First off, I’m still floored by the response to this all. I really didn’t expect it to take off as it did, but I’m sure glad it has. I’ve seen the icon being used on websites from around the world in various languages. Some of the more well known web services have picked up on it and even some popular desktop software for both Mac and PC. The icon itself has been downloaded around 20,000 times from the site, which is not bad at all for being online for just over a month.

I had full intentions of taking on the site on my own, but once I started brainstorming I realized that wouldn’t be possible. A few months ago I started up a new business with a couple close friends of mine. Due to our conflicting and ridiculously busy schedules, we’re yet to roll out any projects under the new banner. I figured this would be a great first project for us and the guys agreed. I also have another developer helping out on a specific area of the site independent to all of us. His part will probably be rolled out as a ‘phase 2′ a little after the site launches, but it’ll be awesome when it does.

In terms of what the site will include, I’m not going to expose all of that just yet. It’s nothing mind blowing by any means, but will be more than merely a place to get the icon. There will be some new formats added, tutorials for each, code samples and as mentioned previously, a custom icon gallery. Speaking of which, check out this awesome revision over at Bartelme Design.

A few people have emailed asking about a license or what the terms of use are. I’ve been in touch with Mozilla about this and will be contacting Microsoft as well once Mozilla have made a decision. This information will definitely be made available on the site when it launches.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I’m late delivering the site. I will admit, a January launch was ambitious. I’d rather take the time to do the site properly and include everything I want than to roll out a half-assed effort just for the sake of hitting the deadline. With that said, I’m not going to say when the site will launch because it’s too early to tell. We’re working hard on it and will roll it out when it’s good and ready.

Lastly, a quick thanks to those that have helped spread the word. FeedIcons.com is almost in the top 1000 on Technorati already and that’s just great! Also, a huge thanks to those that have donated. Every little bit helps and is greatly appreciated.

Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t the least bit angry. I thought for sure if this ever happened, I would be irate. Especially in a case as blatantly obvious as this one. But I wasn’t at all. I was actually laughing as I viewed the source and CSS to find out he hadn’t even bothered to change selector names and all of my comments are still in place. I mean, you know you’re a jerk when you rip someone this bad, but you’re a real lazy jerk when you can’t be bothered to change it up under the hood. The hover link classes are even the same for the main content areas.

The one thing that has got me a little upset though, is that this rip has been featured over at CSS Mania. Now that just sucks. Hopefully this dude has a little decency and will email them to let them know he’s not worthy of being featured. But honestly, I don’t see that happening.