Ikiru Design

Armed with a firm desire to create a WordPress theme different from the others that I’ve made and little plan as to what that should look like, I made new theme that was first called “Small Verdana,” then “Old School,” and now the compromise “Retro Verdana.” It is, I suspect, ugly. But it’s also loaded with novelties I once loved and relished.

From the first webpages I ever made — with FrontPage, I must confess — Verdana was one of those fonts that I knew to use and even liked. I’ve also admired the false depth which is easily created by changing border colors. And I’ve always had a undeservedly strong affinity for the color #336699. And “Retro Verdana” has all of those things. And ugly as it may be, I like the result of combining those things. A lot.

To see this little beast for yourself, click here for a demo. Or, since you may well be too lazy, look right below this line.

Essentially, the issue is this: I have strong suspicion that “Retro Verdana” is ugly. Really ugly. Especially to modern tastes, but also to the timeless ideals to which I’d rather aspire. But I also can’t seem to avoid smiling every single time I see it. I can’t help saying: maybe you’re not the prettiest gal, but I’d still love to dance with you.

I can’t avoid the desire to post this theme and share it publicly even though I could be forever condemned as a victim of hideously bad taste. And I can’t avoid relishing in both the unsightly and the nice and novel features which, to even my surprise, I think it has.

So I guess the whole point is that I have two words to say to those who think it’s ugly: I understand. And I have two words for those who admit fondness for it: I understand.

You can download Retro Verdana here, and find its page here.

I’m glad to showcase another theme I’ve put together, Carter’s Line. Essentially, Carter’s Line is a theme built around two basic ideas, both of which are in the title. “Carter” is the name of the designer (Matthew Carter) who created the two typefaces used in the theme, Georgia and Verdana. The “Line” is probably the more unique aspect of the design, for better or worse. Everything in the theme clings to the line, and the line’s the only one in the design (underlines excluded). As with all my themes, you can view it at the Ikiru Demo Blog and download it immediately.

Because they’re easier than working on a new theme, I’ve whipped up a few more variations to BWO. The first, is BWO_space (demo here), which focuses on white space around the content. It’s rather interesting as an idea, but the execution’s far from perfect. The second is more pedestrian. It’s called BWO_invert (pictured above; demo here) and it’s BWO with, you guessed it, the colors inverted. Neither of them are very radically new or interesting, but I can’t seem to stop creating simple variations on my first theme.

Having been pretty satisfied with my recent modifications to BWO, I decided to move ahead an whip up a simple modification to it. In about 90 minutes, I assembled BWO_one, which is essentially a single column layout. The links normally in a sidebar are now in the footer. This allows there to be even more focus on your content. And, being something whipped up in 90 minutes, don’t forget that BWO_one probably still contains a few uglies — uglies I’ll try my best to remove in the future.

UPDATE: I’ve decided to move Ikiru to BWO_one, at least for a little while. I just feel like showing it off.

Since I released BWO a few days ago, I haven’t stopped tinkering with it. This means that it now has a number of improvements over the earlier version. A quick rundown of aesthetic improvements:

• Made h3 a useful — and correctly styled — way to add headers to subsections within posts
• Fixed lists (both ordered and unordered) so that they won’t look funny at the end of posts
• Added an “Edit” link on single-entry view — it’s next to the categories
• Improved Search Results so that they now display an excerpt in addition to the title
• Improved Archive view so it looks more like regular browsing
• Widened the sidebar — for ad support and for more data to fit
• Narrowed the content section — makes it easier to read (more top-to-bottom, less left-to-right)
• And the big one: Fixed the divider between the content and sidebar — it now will always run the full distance from the navigation menu to the footer

I also made many, perhaps more significant, changes to the back-end. These will be explained in greater detail later, but they make the theme much easier to understand and modify.

For more, visit the BWO page, or download BWO now.