Click here to preview and buy the theme

Last year I began working on what was to become Visual, a WordPress theme aimed at bloggers and web publishers who wish to make more of the images they use with each blog post. The theme makes  use of thumbnails and post excerpts to offer visitors an overall view of the website’s content.

I consider this theme to be ideal for visual blogs (hence the name) such as  food blogs or travel blogs. I actually started designing this theme with my own food blog and travel blog in mind, thinking I would create personalized versions of Visual for each one, once I gather enough articles.

You’re probably wondering how can a theme’s design and development take so much time? Think of it this way: the first pixel was placed back in October 2008, but I didn’t actually work on the theme every day. Not even every week! I changed my mind a few times, then reconsidered, plus there was a lot of procrastination involved, so that’s where the huge time frame comes from.

Affordable premium WordPress theme without the “premium”

I don’t know how this heading sounded to you, but what I meant was that I’ve tried to put all my knowledge into a theme that’s really useful and easy to use and not just an excuse for using the word “premium”. I don’t really like the term “premium theme”, cause now everyone seems to be using it. Everyone is more “premium” than the next guy!

As for the affordable part, I’m gonna be honest with you here: I asked around, I did some research of myself when I decided to put a price tag on this theme. I really feel this theme is worth much more than what it’s being sold for (which is $25 at ThemeForest), but I chose this road for two reasons:

1. ThemeForest is an established marketplace, that can give theme developers a boost. Yeah, they set the price for you. Yeah, I only get 40% from sales, but I can live with that. This is not a “get rich quikly” scheme for me, so I plan to take my time and develop a few more themes for ThemeForest before maybe creating a mini-marketplace of my own.
2. The fact that they set the price was actually my second reason. I know theme usually get a price tag between $20 and $35, so this way the theme will be more accesible to more people. Those who want additional design or functionality on top of what Visual already offers can always contact me and get a nice custom design for a fraction of what a “design from scratch” type of theme would cost.

Screenshots

Home Page

Category Page

Single Page

Theme features

The theme doesn’t use a complicated admin panel and it doesn’t use a lot of effects either. It does however provide an easy way to edit all the content, as well as the look & feel. For more info please check the instructions provided with the theme. Here are some of the theme’s features:

• Three built in color schemes and and a very flexible skinning system that allows you to create your own skins, while keeping the layout intact. And you can do it in under 5 min!
• Very clean and simple artice carousel, allowing you to bring back some of your favorite articles or the articles you really want your users to read.
• Easy way to edit the categories that should be part of the main menu, the category blocks featured on the homepage as well as the posts that should show up in the Featured Articles section.
• Smart scripting that prevents duplicate article links, ensuring more of your content will be featured on the homepage.
• Two widget ready sidebars (one for the main category pages, one for the single pages and archive pages), as well as customization for WP-Polls and FlickrRSS.
• Clever visual navigation inside the single article page and thumbnail integration for the archive pages, both ensuring more page views.
• sIFR implemented for block and widget titles, for an even nicer look and feel
• You get all the main design source files (6 files), both in PSD and in layered PNG (I personally use Fireworks)

Preview and Buy

Click here to preview and buy the theme

You can check more screenshots, as well as preview and buy the theme on the ThemeForest page. Feel free to leave a comment there or on this page. I’m monitoring both and I will do my best to answer all questions.

If you buy the theme and pimp out your website, I would love to hear about it. I’m really looking forward to showcasing the best Visual based websites.

Check the new Rubiqube Forum I created for tips, tutorials and updates, subscribe to my RSS feed and stay tuned!

This is the first part of an eight-part series of articles about designing clean websites that still make a big impact, by using simple layout, beutifull typography and striking photography.

It’s not enough to “know how to use” Photoshop in order to be a web designer, but you don’t necessarily need a degree in graphic design either (although it sure helps!). Basically what I am trying to prove (and it’s something I always believed in) is that common sense goes a long way when it comes to web design.

In this article I’ll talk about web page design planning, wireframing and creating layouts, providing some links to really usefull online tools and resources. Let’s go!

Know your audience, know the content

I bet you heard this plenty of times, right? Well, trust me: this never gets old! Proper planning, wireframing and layout will save you a lot of trouble down the road, so you want to make sure you get it right. Users and content should both influence the way you plan the website’s layout and I’ll tell you why:

Determine page width

While 1024px seems to be the standard nowadays, there are times when you need to use 800px. Or on the contrary… maybe 1024px is not enough. It also helps you determine whether a fixed (my favorite) or fluid layout is more appropriate. Your client know his target audience better, so make sure you ask him about it.

Resources:

• W3C Browser Statistics (if it’s a redesign of an existing website, it’s a good idea to check Google Analytics for real statistics)
• Extract: Know Your Site (told you, didn’t I?) - from
• Optimal width for 1024px resolution? (an oldie, but goldie)
• Fluid Grids (going into a bit of code already, but no harm in thinking ahead)

Prioritize top to bottom

There only so much content you can squeeze above the fold (although I’m not a big fan of the stereotype), so you have to prioritize. Sure, color, font size and other tricks will help you organize things later on, but first you need to determine what your layout looks like from top (important) to bottom (less important).

Use grid based design

Once you have the major vertical blocks in place, it’s time to think about how you will structure the content horizontally. In some cases you might want to use the full page width (header) or split the block into two columns (content + side panel) or even three columns (showcase work, services, etc. on the homepage).

Resources:

When it comes to prioritizing, grids, columns and wireframing, there’s just one article out there that you need to read: Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site. Period! That’s all you need to know! If you don’t suddenly feel enlightened, with a big grin on your face after reading this article, then maybe you’re in the wrong business, my friend.

Use tabs, sliders, carousels

You want to try and keep your page (especially your homepage) as clean as possible, using a generous amount of white space. At least that’s my philosophy! But there are cases (like for most corporate websites out there) when you have to squeeze as much content as possible on the homepage. And these UI elements I mentioned can do wonders when used properly and with usability in mind.

Resources:

jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices - Again, no point runningaround the Interwebs for jQuery resources. This article from Smashing Magazine has everything you need!

Best practices in layout design

Cisco Systems

The layout is split into four main sections, from top to bottom, making use of a big carousel in the header (even though in Flash this time) and also a fews small ones in the bottom sections, as well as a dropdown.

It’s a perfect example of how you can make good use of available space, allowing a lot of content on the homepage, but also keeping a clean look. The Cisco website is a also a “short website” (as I like to call them), similar to what Apple is doing for quite some time. Landing page design at its best, if you ask me.

MailChimp

The MailChimp website has been showcased in design galleries and roundups many, many times. And it’s easy to see why! There are so many examples of design best practices in their homepage design (and throughout the website, for that matter).

This time we’re looking at a “long website” (you saw that coming, right?), but it’s also the perfect example to prove “vertical scroll critics” wrong! Vertical scroll is not bad! I agree, it depends on the type of website you’re building, but for a software product website, vertical scroll is not bad! (did I say that already?). You just have to master sections and grid design and you’ll be fine.

Look at Basecamp, for God’s sake! At first you might think they’re doing something wrong, but give that layout 10 seconds and you’ll say to yourself: “My God, this makes total sense!” :). I’m not saying there isn’t any room for improvement, but the way they manage to squeeze all that info on the homepage and still keep it easy to digest is mondblowing. How they do it? Grid based designm that’s how!

FileMaker

Ok, so the recipe is pretty simple: split the page into sections, top to bottom, then each section into columns. But why stop there? Why not split the columns into more horizontal blocks? No reason why you shouldn’t! Just check how FileMaker is doing it: the third column from section four is split into 2 blocks as well. And if you look more closely, even the first two columns are split into (related this time) content blocks.

Is there a limit to this whole “divide and conquer” strategy? Well… yes there should be. How do you know when to stop? Simple! The content will tell you. Just remember that big means more important, small means less important. You’ll probably say “Thanks for the tip, Obvious Adrian!”, but you’ll be amazed at how many people fail to use this common sense technique properly.

More common sense web design tips?

You bet! This time I won’t stay hidden for too long before posting the next article from the series: Common Sense Tips for Using Web Design Color Schemes. I’ll be leaving on vacation next Saturday, but I hope to get a few more articles ready by then and put WordPress on auto-pilot.

Once again, it’s been way too long since my last article (which wasn’t even an article, it was a free WordPress theme release), so I have decide to make public a short list of articles I’m planning on writing. That should help me focus better and give me a roadmap to follow. It should also allow you, the reader, to make an informed decision on whether you should subscribe / unsubscribe from my blog.

I wrote something similar a while ago and never made good on that promise. And quite frankly,  I probably never will (well maybe I will rethink some of those ideas). Why? Because some of those article ideas are really stupid! While that article was written a year ago, it sounds like the work of a 14 year old. Still, reading it puts a smile on my face, cause it reminds me of my first blogging steps, it reminds me of the journey. I guess we all have our phases, right?

But back to this list: I will group the article ideas into three main categories and I will try to write them by rotation. That way, you don’t (and I don’t) get bored of the same topic. So here goes:

Design

Some of you will remember my article 8 Common Sense Tips for Creating Clean Designs. It’s been quite popular and I’ve been meaning to write a follow up (actually a series), taking each of the 8 tips and writing an article around the topic, with resources from the web, practical tips from my own experience and projects.

1. Common Sense Tips for Creating Web Design Layouts
2. Common Sense Tips for Using Web Design Color Schemes
3. Common Sense Tips for Using Transparency in Web Design
4. Common Sense Tips for Using Contrast in Web Design
5. Common Sense Tips for Using Typography in Web Design
6. Common Sense Tips for Using Gradients in Web Design
7. Common Sense Tips for Using Images in Web Design
8. Common Sense Tips for Using Bling in Web Design

WordPress

I’ve completed lots of WordPress related client projects this year (note to self: update my web design portfolio), some of them involved using WordPress in really creative ways, so I have plenty of tips and tricks to share with you:

1. Customizing Empty Canvas to Match Your Branding Guidelines
2. Jump-start Your Blog or Small Business Website With a Free WordPress Theme
3. Practical Solutions to WordPress Problems (multiple part series, based on things I gather from my projects)
4. Visual - The WordPress Theme for Passionate Bloggers (surprise!)

I’ll update as I come up with new ideas.

Freelancing

During the last two years, they way I work, the way I handle my freelancing business and ultimately the way I make money and handle my cash flow has changed dramatically! I wouldn’t say I’m richer than I was two years ago, but I’m definitely more relaxed and definitely feeling more confident about being successful as a freelancer! Crisis or no crisis!

I went from running after projects to being overrun by project requests, from pricing that was lower than average (compared to the quality services I provide) to pricing I’m really comfortable with, while providing my clients with a hard to refuse “price / quality” ratio! These are two of the aspects that allowed me to play on my own terms and be able to focus on my personal projects / passions / life as well.

So these are probably the most interesting articles to look forward to. I know I would! I will be talking about:

1. Tips for Building a Strong Portfolio Without Resorting to Spec Work
2. Simple Productivity Tips Every Freelancer Should Know
3. The Art of Seduction: Making Clients Fall in Love With Your Services
4. The Art of Cash Flow: Freelancing Tips for Achieving Financial Freedom
5. The Art of Self Promotion: Do It Shamelessly, Do It Now!
6. The Art of Compromise: Learn to Meet The Client Half Way

Got your attention?

I said in the past that I would deliver some kick-ass articles, but I admit I haven’t always been true to my word. Probably the reason why traffic levels as well as the subscribers number stayed pretty much the same in the last few months. If you read some of my past articles, you’ll know I like seeing more traffic on my website (who doesn’t, right?), but I’m not one of those traffic junkies.

Subscribers and genuine people interacting on the blog are way more important for me! So if there was ever a time to unsusbscribe from my blog (for whatever reason), I’m telling you: this is not it! And if there was ever a time to subscibe to my blog, this is definitely it! So go ahead and tell your friends about this article, tweet it, stumble it or digg it (yeah, I finally fixed those social bookmarking buttons).

I will need all the help I can get, as I’m about to make another bet with myself, one that I intend to win: by the time I finish writing these articles, this blog will reach 1500 subscribers. Bold statement? Probably! Doable? We’ll see…

What would really encourage me to choose a certain draft and turn it into and article would be some feedback from you guys. I don’t know if using a poll is of any use (they didn’t seem to work very well in the past), but feel free to write a comment and motivate your choice.

Thank you for reading!

Note: If you just want the free WordPress theme, you might want to skip the long talk about who and how and why and just scroll to the preview and download links. But if you like a good novel, be my guest. Here goes:

About a year ago I released my first (turned out to be the only) free WordPress theme, called Corporate Sandbox. The theme is based on the Sanbox theme (no link, I think the website is being updated) and it’s the kind of WordPress theme that can easily be customized to match any brand or existing look and feel, making it ideal for corporate blogging.

It’s probably this minimalistic, “less is more” approach that made the theme so popular (4800 downloads and counting). In fact, I’m sure of it, as most implementations I’ve seen kept the same look and feel and only updated the theme with the proper logo / header / color scheme.

I used the theme myself on quite a few projects and for me it’s been a great way to save time and be more efficient when designing and implementing custom WordPress themes. But at some point, I realized that the whole Sandbox approach just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Of course I’m talking about “what’s under the hood”. I needed something even simpler, easier to adapt to my design needs.

Theme Frameworks

I won’t go into details about what a theme framework is and what it does, there are more capable people who have done that already. Justin Tadlock’s article is particularly interesting if you’re into the “behind the scenes” type of articles. Just check the links below.

Some WordPress theme developers will argue that theme frameworks are the thing of the future, while some will say they can get in the way. While I do acknowledge the power of a theme framework, I personally wouldn’t use one. I feel it would slow me down, rather than help me be more efficient. And I’m saying this from experience. So you could say I’m part of the second category.

Naked Themes

Not sure if this is the proper terminology, but there are also quite a few themes out there that have been stripped of almost all the styling. They are supposed to be the theme to start from when creating a new custom WordPress theme.

Some of them are pretty clean and are a step forward from the themes using hooks and and filters and other contraptions that 90% of WordPress designers probably don’t (want to) know about anyway. But now they were all too skinny for me!

So I had to choose between the high tech, state of the art WordPress themes that can even cook you dinner if you know how to ask nicely and the very simple themes, that would have you reinvent the wheel evey time you want to implement a new design.

Enter Empty Canvas

You know that saying: “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself!”. Well, that’s what I did. I created my very own canvas to draw on, allowing me to focus more on what counts: custom design, custom features, etc. I called it Empty Canvas, and you can now download it for free.

I always serve my articles with a pinch of humor, but don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all these other themes I mentioned are not done well, on the contrary: they were carefully crafted, I’m sure! But I wanted to do my own thing and the amount of projects I completed in only 4 months tells me I made the right choice.

Also, don’t download this theme and expect the Mona Lisa. It’s only a simple theme, that does wonders for me. My feeling tells me you’ll find it very useful as well, but there’s a possibility that you won’t.

Preview and Download

First of all, here are some features, so you know what to expect:

• compatible with WordPress 2.7.1 (sorry, no threaded comments though - I don’t like them too much)
• wider than Corporate Canvas, allowing better ad integration ( the days of 800×600 are pretty much gone anyway)
• same simple look as Corporate Canvas, but got rid of the comment bubble
• dynamic top menu (page navigation) and widget ready sidebar
• archive page, catering for most situations: categories, tags, search, authors, etc.
• valid, cross browser, minimalistic code
• following a “want more stuff? add it yourself!” philosophy

Preview Theme|Download Empty Canvas (1332) - 60.55 KB

Sorry for the long article, but I’ve been meaning to write it and share this theme with you for a long time.

LATER EDIT 1: Claudia from Chica Blogger pointed out something I’ve been meaning to address myself, since I forgot to mention this yesterday: yes, there are no credits in the theme footer and I’m ok with that.

The theme is free to use for your personal and commercial projects. Most people will probably use the theme for client projects, so the link in the footer might get in the way. Plus, I’m not going crazy about SEO and links right now, I’m happy just building a loyal readership (I know… link + SEO > readers, but you get the point).

So if you do something great with the theme or simply want to write about how it helped you be more productive, I would love to hear about it, so I encourage you to link to this page. Maybe even post a link on Twitter! Or you can just tell your close friends or clients about it and not share it with “the competition”. Whatever your channels are, I’m ok with that.

I almost forgot to give you the theme’s motto: “Work smart, work less, create more!”

LATER EDIT 2: If you are experiencing problems setting a static front page, you might want to redownload the ZIP file and overwrite your old sidebar.php and functions.php files.

First of all, to get any doubt out of the way… No, I’m not retiring (not anytime soon anyway), that was just my lame attempt at an April Fool’s joke.

Now back to this post’s topic: sometime last year I redesigned my website and blog and decided to stop using a built in contact form (via a WordPress plugin), and go with a Wufoo form instead. I chose to do so for a number of reasons, that I’m not going to detail now.

What’s important is that in doing so, I made a stupid mistake that was going to affect my freelancing activity on the short term and that could have even jeopardized it on the long term.

What happened?

I forgot to activate notifications in the admin panel. Wufoo can send you updates via email or even RSS, but you have to enter your email in a box. You’re gonna say “Of course!”, right? Well, this dumb ass writing these lines forgot to do it.

Not only that, but I even sent myself a test message. Of course I didn’t receive it, but since I got carried away with some other things, I forgot to look into it. It seemed strange to me that I did not receive any sort of messages (cause I did receive a few in the past), but I never checked. I acted like an ignorant fool.

Then a few days ago I gave the URL to someone and told them to ask for a direct email there. The message never came (turns out that person never used the form anyway), so I went in and checked. I was stupefied to find out I had 5 months worth of messages: 304 in total! The Wufoo chart shows about 2 messages / day on average.

What did I miss?

If I were to give you a rough estimate of what was in there:

• 75% of the messages were the “I want a blog / website design. How much?” kind. You know… “supermarket shoppers”, as I like to call them.
• 15% were requests from people who gave little info (many simply didn’t know) about what they wanted to do and had very limited budget
• 5% were people asking for help / advice on design or WordPress related issues or people looking to advertise
• 5% were genuine leads. Some of them were really interesting project!

What did I do?

I went through every single message (took me a few hours), so if you tried to contact me and you didn’t hear from me until this day, your message was either too old (although I saved a few and will send replies next week) or it was one of the 75%.

I apologized to quite a few people, I sent replies to those who were looking for a design / redesign and didn’t seem to find it elsewhere and bookmarked a few interesting blogs in the process. Lucky for me, one way or another a few of the people who had trouble finding me managed to get in touch through other means.

The one that got away!

You all know those fisherman stories, about that big catch that got away: “Oh… if I had my … or my …” (fill in the blanks with state of the art fishing gear). That’s what they all say! For me, it wasn’t even something fancy, it was just a matter of pushing a button. But I didn’t, so I missed the chance of being part of a few really cool projects.

Even so, I had plenty of opportunities and interesting projects (maybe except for December 2008, which was a pretty low month - not sure I wanted it otherwise anyway), so I can’t really complain. But just for reference, here’s what I missed:

Jet Set Zero

I was contacted by Rob Ward from Jet Set Zero to help them design the website and give it that professional “pop”, as Rob said. Apparently, they managed to pull it off and the website looks awesome! So I’m not feeling too bad about this one. Great work, guys, you have a new subscriber!

You know how much I love to travel and that my dream is to travel the world someday. So this was one of the projects I probably would have done for free. But shhh… don’t go telling people about it!

The Knead for Bread

Chuck from CookingBread.com contacted me to help him with a design for a new blog he was about to launch: The Knead for Bread. Apparently, Chuck also did just fine in finding a replacement, so the blog looks great and the photography is amazing! Yet another blog in my RSS reader.

Tony Wu Blog

Tony Wu, underwater photographer with an impressive portfolio, contacted me to design his blog to match his portfolio website’s look and feel. I love scuba and snorkeling and I love photography, so putting my hands on all that great content (just check his portfolio, it’s mind blowing!) would have been lots of fun.

Richard Powell of Samedis Design did an outstanding job with the blog design, so at least I’m happy yet another great project turned out right!

Since I was out of the country for most of January, the first two project would have probably been out of the question anyway. Still… Rob, Chuck, Tony, sorry guys and good luck with your blogs! I’ll be watching you!

Lessons learned

This has been a pretty long post, so I’ll try to keep it short. Although I’m probably one of the few bloggers to flame himself (and on his own blog for that matter), I’m the type of guy that admits mistakes and likes to think he can learn from them. Maybe you can too!

Plus you know I’m all about connecting the dots, so it’s good to keep this on record:

• Lesson 1: it’s the simple, stupid mistakes that can do the most damage (how many times have you spent hours debugging some script or HTML, because of a typo?)
• Lesson 2: all that crap in my Inbox clearly shows I definitely have to rethink my website copy and maybe structure. The design / layout will probably stay
• Lesson 3: I’ve had confirmation that some of my recent decisions have been good decisions, that will hopefully shape my future “career”; more about this later
• Lesson 4: this isn’t something new, but there are still many people who think that starting a blog based on an idea, a cheap so called “custom blog design” and tons of AdSense is the key to success

If I think of any others, I’ll update this post.

Conclusions

So all in all, this wasn’t all that bad. It was a simple (although stupid) mistake. But what if this were something more important? Did you do something that you ended up regreting? Do you still regret that, or was it all for the best? I look forward tto your thoughts.

An extraordinary thing happened a month ago! It’s probably a once in a lifetime opportunity and I have been dying to talk about it ever since. Unfortunatelly, I was unable to blog or tweet anything, due to some confidentiality clauses.

But now it’s official and I can share some of that story with you. I’m sure you’re all wondering what event could be so important, that would determine me to quit may way of life (yeah, freelancing is a way of life for me).

The Premise

Those of you that have been following me on Twitter probably know that I was in London in January, on my way to the Dominican Republic, for a well deserved vacation. While in Londond, I got the chance to meet up with a client I worked with in December 2008, who was really impressed by my work (his words, not mine) and wanted to make me a business proposal.

The Proposal

Turns out that my client (for whom I designed a corporate blog) was actually Senior VP for a large company (not at liberty to tell, but it’s from the oil industry). Their plan is to build a corporate portal running on WordPress, that not only requires perfect integration with the corporate brand, but also a great deal of custom features.

After I got back to Bucharest in February, we kept in touch on Skype and after a few rounds of negotiations and discussions about the project, the result was a brief from them, a proposal from me, a signed contract and a kick off date for this exciting project: May 1st. The price for building such a bold website? Can’t say, of course, but it’s a six figure number! So now you know why I was so anxious.

Do you really retire?

Yes and no. Confused? Read on:

No, I won’t retire forever, because web design and freelancing is what I love most. Plus I’m sure the money will run out at some point. ;

I will however take a 6 month break from freelancing, during which I intend to do what I always wanted: travel the world and just blog. So while I didn’t win the Name Your Dream Assignment contest, I eventually got my big paycheck that would help me fullfil my dream, proving that hard work (and a touch of luck, I admit) can eventually have unexpected results.

What next?

One month from now I will start work on the big project. There is also another really fun project (pro bono work this time) I’m about to finalize, so I will be sure to keep you posted. And on July 1st, I will embark on my biggest adventure ever and you will hear all about it on my travel blog.

And remember: work smart, work less, live more!

I just found out via WPZOOM that the guys over at Deluxe Themes just released a new WordPress Theme, called Red Carpet. This is their best theme by far, no doubt about that and I personally like it. There’s only one problem: they say “Inspired by People magazine…”, but the design is an almost exact copy.

Which makes me wonder: how long will the theme last, before Deluxe Themes (or one of their clients) gets a lawsuit on their hands? If the theme becomes very popular, there will be a lot of People.com copycats out there, powered by WordPress. Think about it: how many people afford (or have the skills) to create a custom design? So they’ll be stuck with the copycat.

Wrong choice? What would you do?

Hope I’m wrong about this, but I’m afraid they made a bad choice by copying the design as well, rather than just using (some of) the website’s layout and functionality as a starting point and be more creative on the design side. I’m afraid this choice might jeopardize their chances of selling a theme that would otherwise have been a hit.

There are lots of great news websites and blogs out there that can be a source of inspiration (even I have a long list of bookmarks), and People.com is definitely a great source for inspiration if you’re building a glossy WordPress theme. But my question is: where do you draw the line? Is this good publicity or bad publicity? Will potential buyers be turned on or turned off by the similarity?

Just to be clear

I like some of their themes and I respect the fact that Deluxe Themes are one of the few WordPress theme developers (maybe the only?) that make their themes available for download and charge you only for a “copyright removal”. Bold move, if you ask me. So I’m not throwing dirt or anything, I’m simply raising a couple of business strategy questions here.

I encourage you to share your thoughts, but kindly ask you to do it in a constructive manner. Thanks!

P.S. Just noticed another theme, caled Google Mail.

Those of you who read my previous post and see this post’s title probably think I won the lottery or something. Well, wish I had, but nope, that’s not it. This is just my submission to the Name Your Dream Assignment contest, sponsored by Lenovo and Microsoft. You might have heard about it.

The idea behind the project is pretty simple: dream up your greatest photo assignment ever, get friends and neighbors to vote for your brilliant idea and win $50.000 to live the dream.

My dream assignment

As some of you might know, my biggest dream is to travel the world, work remotely and be able to fund my travel through web design, photography and blogging, things I really love. It’s something I believe in and I hope to be able to do at some point in life.

I consider winning the Name Your Dream Assignment contest as one huge shortcut to my dream.

But I can’t do this alone. There’s only a handful of friends and family that I can spam with “Vote for me” messages. So that is why I turn to you, my readers. If you can spare 1 minute,  register on the website and cast a vote (PICS as they call them) for my dream assignment.

Support my dream assignment

Why should you vote for me?

• you would help me make my dream come true and feel all fuzzy inside
• you would help me gather tons of material from my travel blog
• you would help me worry less about the rent and more about what my next blog topic
• you would help me prove that blog traffic is not that important, but people are!
• you would help me support a noble cause as well (10 to be exact)

You can go to my assignment page and vote, stumble my assignment page, or spread this tweet. Thanks!

LATER EDIT: At the time of this post, FeedBurner show exactly 700 subscribers (don’t mind the counter, I’m manually updating that from time to time). I’m thinking 10% of you might be out of town, on vacation, whatever. But I’m counting on 630 PICS more or less, alright?

I’m pretty sure that’s what most of you are wondering, especially those of you who subscribed to my blog during this period. The fact that the number of subscribers increased from about 500 subscribers at the time of my last post to a whopping 690 subscribers only a couple of days ago means that I must have done something good in 2008 in terms of blogging.

But most of all it means I have to get back in the blogging saddle ASAP and continue producing good material. The pressure’s on me now, so to speak. I will give you a bit more detail below about what you should expect from this blogger in 2009.

For now, I’ll just say I will probably focus more on freelancing articles (real ones, straight from the trenches), talk more about my personal online projects, but also try to deconstruct some of my client projects for you. I always love reading similar articles from David Airey or Jacob Cass, and I’m sure you do too.

But first… What have I been up to?

Freelancing change of plan

Some of you might know (if you checked my web design portfolio) that in last year or so I worked closely with the guys from London based Net Communities, as part of bigger team of designers and developers. I had the chance to work on some cool projects, learn new things and meet new people. All in all… it’s been fun! But as they say, all good things come to an end. In this case, it was my choice to leave the team and was entirely for personal reasons.

When I decided to go on the road of full-time freelancing, I had financial reasons too (although at the time I had some savings set aside for “bad weather”), but they were mostly related to the fact that I’m not the type of person who can sit still for too long. And I mean that from a geographical stand point as well. As some of you might know, my dream is to travel the world and be able to fund my journey by doing my web design work remotely.

So long story short: my gut feeling told me this is the right thing to do!

Was this a good idea?

Considering I had a long term working relationship with a respected company that sent pretty constant design work my way, the fair thing to ask is “Was this a good idea?” (or as some freelancers might put it “Are you f***ing nuts?”).

I think it was and I also honestly believe that sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone and take some chances in life. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be having the resume that I have, I wouldn’t be having the experience that I have and I definitely wouldn’t be doing what I do.

So what have I been up to?

As you can imagine, December was a pretty low month, with the holidays and all, so I only worked on a couple of smaller projects and tried to set the ground for some future projects. My wife and I spent the XMAS and New Years Eve at home and I had the chance to cook a nice Christmas turkey for the whole family.

While that might sound depressing at first, it really wasn’t, because the only thing we could think of was our dream vacation to the Dominican Republic. This was my birthday present for my wife and I used pretty much all our savings for this one. But, boy, it sure was worth it!

So after spending much of January sitting in the sun and drinking cocktails, in February I was back, facing the hard reality of unpaid bills and canceled projects. As if it wasn’t good enough that my stock portfolio was severely shrunk last year by this never ending economical crisis.

You could say the last 78 days had highs and lows. Right now things are starting to look good once again, I’m involved in a couple of really interesting projects and I will hopefully be busy for the next couple of months.

What next, any plans for the future?

You bet! I’ll continue to do my freelancing thing and I will hopefully be on my way out of the country soon. Last year I was fortunate enough to see Vienna, Prague and Halkidiki in Greece. This year I already saw London and the Dominican Republic. Now I’m hoping to raise money for other trips, preferably in the summer time.

I already took advantage of a really cool Valnetine’s Day offer from Lufthansa (100 Euro - round trip for two - that is crazy!) and booked a flight to Milan for August. I have the travel bug and I can’t get rid of it (not sure I want to either).

Of course one can’t travel the world on dreams alone, so I have to work as well. Besides the regular freelancing work, I also have a couple of ideas for new WordPress related projects that should help me not only fund my “need for travel”, but also leverage this crisis somehow and turn it into something useful for a change.

As you can imagine, there will be lots of things to share on this blog as well. Plus I definitely have to update my Portfolio with some recent projects and some of the ones that I’m working on right now. Then there are some other blogs and websites that I really want to update / launch on a regular basis. And did I mention photography is my newly discovered passion? We all know passions are fun, but can be expensive as well, right?

So yeah, definitely a busy, busy year for me, from a professional, touristic and personal point of view (got some personal “projects” lined up as well). I can only say thank you for subscribing, thank you for joining me in my journey and who knows… my trips might take me to your city someday and then we’ll meet for drinks!

And don’t forget: work smart, work less, earn more, live more!

Most of you are probably familiar with ThemeForest, but for those of you who are not, ThemeForest is an online marketplace where people can buy and sell web design templates (from static XHTML / CSS to full blown Joomla or WordPress themes).

I have been following the website ever since they launched it, because I have a couple of WordPress themes in the pipeline myself. And there’s another reason: as a custom WordPress theme designer, I always try to make my life easier (and sometimes meet a client’s budget), by customizing an existing WordPress theme. There are a lot of free ones out there, but in some cases (especially with more specialized themes), the solution comes from payed themes.

To be totally honest, not all of the WordPress themes from ThemeForest are good quality, but there are a couple of themes that I would buy anytime and you’ll find them listed below, along with some usage recommendations / ideas. The main criteria for choosing these themes were clean code, flexibility and attention to details.

1. Real Estate Theme

There are a couple of other similar WordPress themes out there (not on ThemeForest), but Real Estate Theme is by far the cleanest and easiest to brand for any client. But should come as no surprise, since the theme was created by Collis himself.

2. Briefcase

Briefcase is a really nice and simple portfolio WordPress theme. It has a large feature on the homepage and also provides an easy way to organize and showcase your work. It’s the ideal theme for designers and photographers. One other application I’m thinking of is a book website: add some sample pages, a couple of words about the author, throw in a PayPal button and you’re set.

3. Sharp

Sharp is a WordPress theme inspired by the desgin of Creattica and of course created under the Envato umbrella. The theme is ideal for design showcase blogs, because the sidebar is narrow (maybe too narrow), leaving a lot of space for the content area. I also think the theme is cool for other niche blogs, where big bold images are key.

4. On The Field

The concept behind this WordPress theme is sports, but I think On The Field is a really versatile theme. I like the big titles, bold images and the top navigations. The last comment on each blog post is a really nice touch as well. All in all, it’s the kind of theme that you can use out of the box (because the design is clean), or you can custmize it to fit your needs.

5. Hawaii

Hawaii is one of the few travel WordPress themes that I like. The three column layout, the centered post title, the subtle use of graphics… all these things bundled together seem like the perfect canvas for a travel blog. And with a few small tweaks (updating the header), this theme can be ideal for a fashion or gossip type of blog.

6. Yourfolio

Just like the Briefcase theme, Yourfolio is great WordPress theme (I like it more actually) for showcasing design work or photography, but also to be used as a personal website for book authors, speakers, etc. The Portfolio section can quikly be converted to a My Books section or Events section.

Hope you like this selection! Stay tuned (or better yet susbscribe to RSS), because I will buy one or two of these themes and implement some of these ideas. And of course, everything will be documented into a nice, detailed tutorial.