So, for people who just can’t wait I’ve decided to upload it here: killerlight2-2.0.1.

Yep, after far too much procrastination, the successor to my first WordPress theme is here.

It has taken a week of evenings to convert it from a layered Photoshop design into HTML and CSS. The previous version of KillerLight was based on the code of the K2 theme, and ended up being heavily customised. This time around, version 2 is based upon Thematic and very little in the way of HTML changes has been made – just a few more wrapping divs here and there. This should lead to a very robust theme.

Gone is the animated header background, at least in this version. It caused far too many complaints and confusion, although I still think the idea is sound provided the animation is subtle.

I’m going to submit the theme to WordPress.org’s themes directory soon, and once approved (fingers crossed) it should be easy for people to find and install into their WordPress v3 site.

More information can be found on the Idea Cog website, where information about the theme is being hosted.

EDIT: Until the theme is available on wordpress.org, you can find a download link on this post.

I decided the weekend before last that I can’t continue trying to promote Foresight without having some business cards to give to potential customers. Given that I’m trying to get the software known on a budget of effectively zero, word-of-mouth and hand-to-hand promotion is forming a key part of my initial strategy.

Designing stuff is always fun, but designing a business card is also difficult. It’s something that will give a lasting impression within seconds of it being presented, must contain lots of information in an attractive manner, and most importantly of all it must be correct! Unlike digital media that I work with on a daily basis, in print the ink has a tendancy to be permenantly etched into the paper stock.

I decided to keep my cards quite simple, but also made them serve a dual purpose. Not only do my cards have the name of the business and my contact details, but they also remind the recipient of what my flagship product is and what it’s about.

I also decided to only include online contact details – email address and website URL. These are certainly sufficient for most people’s needs. I didn’t include a phone number because for one I don’t currently have a dedicated business line (I’m working on that at the moment), but also I have a day job that I plan on keeping for the forseeable future and so wouldn’t be around to answer it anyway.

I ordered the cards from moo.com, having found them through Top CashBack (see my earlier post for details). They have a brilliantly designed site, with a well-built submission process. They also have order tracking so I was always able to check on my order.

The cards arrived today, 3 days ahead of the estimated delivery date. I’m really pleased with them, and the card they are printed on gives a real feeling of quality – all important when trying to promote one’s wares. They aren’t cheap though, at £10 + P&P for 50 cards. Those cards will very quickly disappear with my initial upcoming ‘friends & family’ marketing/awareness campaign.

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’ve started my own business. Part of the fun of starting a business, for me at least, is the graphic design needed to create a brand identity.

There are many things that constitute a brand identity, including the name, logo and brand colours. Choosing a name is probably the hardest part, and I’ve worked through many iterations to get there.

I liked the idea of the brand being based around building or creating something. At the time, ‘Killer Idea’ seemed to be playing on my mind so I toyed with the name ‘Killer Idea Factory’. This was also partly inspired by the Icon Factory.

The first interpretation was very literal, and the logo was far from a good idea. Logos should be clean, simple, and identifiable when printed in a single colour.

Another version attempted to use typography, and failed miserably.

However, after this the ‘Cog and Bulb’ design was born.

As you can see, the first version of this idea was in full-colour. Full colour logos rarely succeed, as they are limited in their use. They don’t scale down well, and are not easily adapted to work with different colour pallettes. However, I thought I was onto something I would eventually use, so now it’s a matter of refinement.

The first refinement was to simplify the design.

Then add some colour, and try to start deciding how to integrate the name.

The version above looks very busy, and unbalanced. The next attempt was to even it out by making a horizontal version.

That works better, but the name is ludicrously long. Perhaps including the name within the bulb might make things a little more compact?

Ok, it’s getting there. But it’s still not what I would consider a professional image.

Let’s try changing the typeface.

Wow that’s dull. The loss of colour probably doesn’t help, and neither does the choice of fonts.

The next 3 iterations toy with different landscape layouts and 2 different typefaces.

At this point I decided it looked a bit static. Cogs tend to need to turn in order to be of any use, so the next challenge was to try and get movement involved (without animation).

Now that looks stupid!

Bingo! A 45 degree rotation does the job. It also looks a little like a ‘Q’, not that doing so is really of any interest.

So, now a few more close iterations:

Now, I’ve found a typeface, a graphic and colour pallette that I like. But I was still not sure about the name. Time for a rethink.

Eventually, of course, I ended up with Idea Cog. This actually works in many different ways:

• it’s a literal interpretation of the graphic (and vice versa)
• it suggests innovation as well as production
• quite aptly for the first product, it could also be interpreted as facilitating the development of ideas (i.e. a cog in a company)

There are some disadvantages to this name, such as the lack of domain name availability. There are some squatters, and some genuine users of the same name in other countries. However, on the balance of it, I decided that this name worked well and shouldn’t cause confusion with other organisations with the same name.

So, after a few minor tweaks, I give you the official logo for Idea Cog:

Incidentally, all of these were created in SVG format (vectorised) using the fantastic Inkscape.

Well, perhaps with the advent of HTML5, specifically the Canvas element, this will hopefuly be improved when I have the time. This new element is designed for graphics rendering, and uses the graphics card to it’s full advantage where possible. This should produce a huge difference in performance. For those without an HTML5 browser, they will see a standard static (non-animated) header.

Back in April I decided to take a well-earned break from work. During that week, I got a lot accomplished. Mostly I worked on my software project (details to be revealed fairly soon, probably) but towards the end I started my first decorating project in my flat.

I wanted to do something a little different, and make the room look a little larger. I think when I was ill one time, with only daytime TV for entertainment, I caught one of those ‘sell your house for more’ type programs. One thing they did when making the property into a showhome was add a touch of wallpaper, but not directly to the wall. Instead, a large sheet of thin MDF was covered in a short space of time, and the panel was then propped against the wall. Such a simple idea, but I’d never thought of it before.

So, I’ve taken that idea and built on it a bit. As you can see from the gallery below, I’ve done something on a bit of a larger scale, with the idea of it being a bit more permenant and interesting. I purchased a single roll of fancy wallpaper from wallpapers direct, built a wooden support frame, primed it, lined it, stripped the aforementioned lining from it (lining caused more problems than it solved), and finally covered it with some help from my wallpapering-veteran father.

The larger frame wasn’t just to make it more sturdy and more of a feature; it was key to creating a lighting feature. After much deliberation over the best and most cost-effective way to illuminate, I chose a rope light as the source of the backlighting effect. Lighting efficiency was optimised through a late decision to line it with plain ol’ kitchen foil.

As for the rest of the decoration (and the choice of wallpaper) I took cues from my existing bed set. The pallete ended up consisting of a range of blues, white, chrome and black. The key to putting them all together is varying levels of contrast. The eye is drawn to areas of high contrast, which not only allows you to highlight features but also can be used to provide a greater feeling of space by drawing the eye around the room in a particular manner. I’m just making this stuff up BTW, but it’s what I’ve based my decorating on and it appears to have worked pretty well

Being on a bit of a budget, the accessories had to come cheap. It’s possible to get away with this by sticking to a small pallette and taking advantage of contrast to make things look better than they really are. Anyway, enough writing. I was going to write a much more structured essay, but I’ll let the photos do the talking.

My first WordPress theme, KillerLight, has been released on wordpress.org. The theme is a slightly altered version of the one used on here.

Like this site, it has a javascript-based animated header which fades slowly for a lovely faux-lighting effect. All current WordPress features are supported, including widgets and gravatars.

One important thing to note about the theme is that IE 6 is not supported – it’s just not worth the effort. Instead, a message is displayed to users of IE < 7 informing them that they should either upgrade or get a different browser.

• There is now a JavaScript-driven header animation, which has the ability to detect a slow computer and disable itself. You can turn it on and off manually with the button at the top-right.
• A few more icons have been added here and there
• The ‘read more’ link is now styled
• The footer can expand vertically instead of being fixed height

I’ve taken a look at it in IE6, and it’s not as badly broken as I feared. At the moment the animated header screws things up royally, and the top horizontal navigation doesn’t display horizontally. I hope to at least get things looking reasonably presentable soon, by disabling the animated header for IE6 and changing the way the top nav is styled.

As for a future release of the theme, it’s all planned out in my head. A non-branded version of the header images will be included, so anyone can have that fading animation. The name of the blog will be overlayed in standard text.

I also have a few ideas for spin-off themes, which are a slightly different take (new graphics) on the same structure. Watch this space!

It’s been a long time coming, but I have finally produced my own design for this site.

KillerLight is based on the theme of ‘illumination’. I wanted it to give the impression that things have been illuminated by artificial means, and I looked to a few existing WordPress themes for an idea of what needed doing.

It’s taken about 3 days to put together, just in time for the new year. It was created using a mix of Photoshop, Eclipse (with PHPEclipse) and Notepad++ (for CSS editing). This is my first WordPress theme, and the first serious bit of web design I’ve done in a while.

I also did a little bit in Flash, attempting to have the header rainbow stuff animated and fading between different colours, but there were too many issues so I’ve put that idea on hold for the moment. You can view my attempt if you like by sticking the querystring ‘?animate=true’ on the end of the URL. I know that it doesn’t work in FF on Ubuntu, probably because the Flash player implementation for Linux is a little different.

I don’t have IE 6 at home, so I’ve not been able to test in that. However I assume it will be quite broken, so for anyone unfortunate enough to still be using < IE 7, they will be warned that things won’t look nice and be advised to upgrade or get a different browser. Seems to work fine in FF 3 and Safari (Windows) though.

This theme is not by any means perfect, and there’s plenty more work to do on some of the bits that aren’t commonly accessed. With that in mind, if you spot any issues, please report them in the comments of this post.