Frankly, I consider that unacceptable.

Now’s the time to change things. I’ve teamed up with good friends Yaron Schoen, Rogie King, and my Services Director at Lift, Brad Miller (aka Christopher Walken) to bring you the very first Dribbble community drive for charity:water.

We’re giving away over 25 Dribbble invites in a raffle that aims to raise $5,000 to build a well for communities that don’t have access to clean drinking water.

Help us Out

So far, we’ve raised over $800 over the weekend and have no doubt you’re going to help us get all the way to our $5,000 goal within the next week or two. Getting involved is so easy. Here are your options:

1. Donate to the campaign.
2. If you have a Dribbble account, post a comment or “like” the dribbble shot.
3. Retweet the campaign.
4. Write a blog post with a link to the campaign.
5. Send an email to your friends and family with a link to the campaign.
6. Post a message on Facebook asking your friends and family to get involved:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

If you’re reading this via RSS reader, you may want to click through instead. I’ve been really trying to focus on simplicity lately in my designs, and this version of Chris-Wallace.com is no exception. I’ve stripped out all the unneeded elements, all the distractions, and what’s left is a simple, usable website. Now, of course, it’s not perfect. I actually just transformed the previous theme from the site into the one you see here by changing the 12-column grid to a different width (from 960 to 720) and updated some typography and a simple new mark (inspired by friend Trent Walton‘s new mark and designed using my new Wacom Intuos4 pen tablet).

Simplicity in Design

One of my favorite quotes regarding simplicity in design comes from someone a heck of a lot smarter than I:

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Albert Einstein

I love that quote. When I first started designing at the ripe age of 15, I wanted to overload every page with graphical elements that “look cool.” Looking back, I did make some “cool” things, but I can’t say they were very purposeful or easy to use. Over the past few years, I’ve learned a great deal about purposeful interaction design and building websites with the user’s goals in mind, instead of my own, which are never the same. Getting back to that quote from Albert Einstein, I’ve begun to incorporate that philosophy into my work and have been extremely pleased with the results.

A Challenge to Simplify

In my quest to simplify my designs, a new desire to simplify my life has also sprung forth. A focus on God and my family is something I’ve always needed, but have told myself that it will all fall into place “in time” or “when things settle down.” One of my main goals in the coming months is to make sure I’m spending the time with my family that I want to spend with them. Less internet, less distraction, less wasting time on unimportant things. More time in prayer, more time with family, more time meeting my family’s needs (and not just financially, which has always been my focus).

What can you do to simplify?

I’ve been silently debating whether or not my workflow and productivity in Adobe Photoshop are going down the tubes. Sure, I’m able to build some pretty nice sites and interfaces in Photoshop, but I fear I’m missing something by using a glorified photo editing program to craft things meant for the web.

After watching my broseph Rogie King’s Fireworks tutorials and seeing the new features in Fireworks CS5, I’m feeling a lot of internal pressure (as in inside my own head, not inside my organization) to make the switch from Photoshop (which was truly designed for photo editing) to Fireworks. Over the next few weeks, I will be slowly transitioning to the new hotness that is Adobe Fireworks, a design program explicitly aimed at building websites, not just creating stunning graphics or images. Sure, I may dabble in Photoshop when I need a feature here and there, but from now on, I want to take advantage of all the little things Fireworks has to offer where Photoshop tends to crap itself. Not to mention the constant crashing of Photoshop on my mac, which can be eternally frustrating.

So there, I said it. I am switching to Fireworks. Who’s with me? (Side note: As I post this, Photoshop just froze up on me. I think it knows what I’m typing. I’m scared.)

If you haven’t already seen or heard, we just launched UpThemes.com, a brand new provider of WordPress themes at South by Southwest Interactive week in Austin, TX.

So far, the response has been overwhelming. In addition to receiving comments like “This is far and away the best theme framework I’ve ever seen,” we’ve also been contacted by some influential folks in the WordPress community, like our friends at Obox Design and Mr. Matt Mullenweg himself, expressing their congratulations on launching a new GPL theme shop.

Make sure to check out Holding Pattern, our first free WordPress theme that includes our brand new UpThemes Framework, which is also licensed under the GPL and makes it super easy to customize your theme’s images, colors, text and so much more. Make sure to watch the screencast to see for yourself how easy it is to work with.

After launching the AllDevJobs.com Blog, I decided it would be a heck of a lot more fun to give away a copy of Things for Mac to 5 lucky email subscribers. To read the details and enter the contest, please visit the new AllDevJobs.com Blog.

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet Gary Vaynerchuk at a book signing/networking event at World Market in St. Louis. Now, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t seen many of his videos and have never purchased a bottle of wine in my life, so I certainly can’t claim to be his biggest fan. However, after meeting him, I can safely say that this is one guy that really knows what he’s talking about, especially when it comes to knowing where the web is going. On top of that, he’s super nice.

After standing in line for about 20 minutes to get a signed copy of “Crush It,” I met Gary, shook his hand, and told him I had a strange request. My buddy Brad(@imbradmiller) couldn’t make it to the event because he was stuck at the office working late. Naturally, I had to rub it in that he couldn’t be there so I thought, “what’s better than putting him on the phone with Gary Vaynerchuk? Nothing.” So I handed my iPhone to Gary with Brad on the line. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I do remember him cursing at Brad, asking him why wasn’t able to make it. After joking with him a bit, he let him know that he was genuinely sorry he couldn’t be there. After hanging up with Brad, Gary signed a book for me and proceeded to kick my butt in an epic thumb wrestling match.

After the signing, Gary spoke for at least an hour. I think the most important thing he spoke on had to do with the companies he’s been investing in, Gowalla and Matt Galligan’s own SimpleGeo. After the event/talk, there were quite a few of us who went over to Robust Wine Bar and had some time to talk with Gary in a much more casual setting. I also met some awesome folks from the Social Media Club St. Louis. All in all, it was a great event and I’m certainly glad I was able to participate and spend a little time getting to know the Jets-loving Gary Vaynerchuk.

The video I posted is part 1 in a series of 7 videos posted by Karen Goodman (@karenstl), a real estate agent in the area, who runs a blog called Arch City Homes. I would encourage you to watch all the videos if you have time, as the advice and information he shares are indispensable. And also, big thanks to Karen for posting the videos!

Odds are if you were using the Custom Post Template plugin and upgraded to WordPress 2.9, it broke. Luckily, there is a very simple fix while you wait for an official update. Navigate to your plugins directory, pop open the file named ‘custom-post-templates.php’ and find line 126. Replace the whole line with the following:

$template_data = implode( '', file( $template ) );

That should take care of it. Enjoy!

I just wanted to share the new logo for one of the projects I am currently working on. Odds are if you’re in the WordPress world, you know John Saddington. He operates under @human3rror on twitter and has released a number of WordPress themes on his website. He is a great guy and I am very excited to be working with him on a very fun project. I just recently completed the logo for this super-secret project and asked John if I could share this with you all to get some feedback on it. Basically, the concept behind the logo is the idea of being recharged or refueled. I’d love to know what you think about it!

I was in the process of transferring MashedJobs.com to its new owner (recently sold on Flippa) and while I was working in my GoDaddy account, I thought it would be fun to go through the list of domain names I own and list them all here with an explanation of why I own them. After participating in the latest meme-craze URL ABC from TVD, I thought this would be a fun way to share my ideas and domain purchase mistakes with all my friends.

So here you go:

• 9creatives.com – I had an idea to put together a small network of designers that posted just ridiculously awesome content and aggregating it all in one place. I even designed a nonapus (well, that’s what Anton called my octopus with nine tentacles, anyway)
• advertwitter.com – In my attempt to piggyback on the insane amount of crazy hype surrounding twitter, I registered a couple domains that I thought could hold high value in the future. This was one of those purchases.
• alienrobots.org – I really like alien robots. Considered switching my main blog over to this one.
• alldevjobs.com – Currently provides rad design and dev jobs to job seekers.
• ampednetwork.com – Was trying to build a blog network. Well, thought about it anyway.
• cannedtweets.com – I wanted to build a database of funny/awesome things to say on twitter, then offer a chance for people to tweet them. Seems like a good idea still, just not sure it really is as awesome as I originally thought.
• chris-wallace.com – Um. That’s the blog you’re reading.
• designerwordpress.com – Pretty obvious domain given my experience with WordPress. Can’t really use it for a business though, since it violates the WordPress trademark. Could use it to redirect traffic though.
• designmoo.com – Awesome source of design links.
• getplucked.com – Was trying to pick some good domains for an application called Pluck.
• kitchenmoderno.com – After building up and selling MyLibros.com, my partner and I were very much into e-commerce and wanted to open a store selling kitchen items.
• liftux.com – Coming soon.
• logocontest.net – Was thinking about offering a way for non-profits to hold crowdsourced competitions for new branding development. If you think you can help me build this, contact me. Still on my list of things to build.
• mashedjobs.com (sold)
• mixcss.com – Crazy awesome design gallery.
• newsnear.me – Planned to build a news aggregator with sub-domains for locations. http://stlouis.newsnear.me for example.
• pluckthat.com – (repeat) Was trying to pick some good domains for an application called Pluck.
• refreshstl.com – Planning to start Refresh St. Louis with this domain.
• refreshstlouis.com – (repeat) Planning to start Refresh St. Louis with this domain.
• simplybase.com – I have no effing clue.
• strayrescue.net – StrayRescue.org let their domain expire on accident and they needed a replacement domain while they worked to get it back.
• tvframestore.com – Another of my e-commerce ideas, I thought TV frames were going to become increasingly popular. I think they still will. But I don’t know anything about them.
• tweetbuy.com – Again, piggybacking on the whole twitter app idea I bought this domain with the intention of selling it or displaying different websites that allow you to “buy” tweets.
• typawegraphy.com – In Awe of Typography. I want to build an awesome blog with this.
• upthemes.com – Coming soon.
• userpile.com – I have no clue why I bought this domain.
• usertrain.com – I was thinking about building a UX blog and this was a domain that I really liked.
• virtualsxsw.com – I was sad about missing out on SXSW so I built a site that aggregated all tweets from it.
• walmedia.com – The parent company of Lift, Designmoo, MixCSS, AllDevJobs.com, etc.
• webify.me – Not sure what I wanted to do with this one, but I knew it was cool. Still is.