Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

I’ve learnt a lot through running this Blog and managing its Wordpress backbone. Other than getting pretty good at setting up blogs quick, one of the interesting skills I have picked up is the ability to create, hack and modify theme designs, so that I can give all my blogs a unique face. At times its been a tough and frustrating experience (ie having to learn CSS), but at the end of the day its been satisfying and something I really enjoy doing. So I though that I would like to start sharing some of the theme designs that I have created/modified to meet my needs.

So without further adieu I like to share, with all of my Design Sojourn readers, my first Wordpress blog theme called “Brand-You”. It was inspired by the idea of the importance of creating a brand and blog network around you. The theme is colourful (I wanted to get away from Web 2.0 colours), simple, clean, fast and does not for any special plug-ins. It is 3 columns, Adsense and Widget ready, and tested with the latest Wordpress version 2.2. I’ve also added a lot of comments and “marked up” into the code so that its easy for non-programming experts like myself to change things.

The coding of the “Brand-You” theme was adapted and modified from the “Green with Envy” theme by ChiQ Montes. Additional CSS coding borrowed from Design Sojourn’s style sheet created by Aen Direct and Icons applied from Famfamfam.

Example of the Theme:
This screen shot of the theme in action as applied on this website.

Download and Release Notes:

Click on the icon to download.

Version 1.2: Flickr and CSS code fixes.
Version 1.1: Descriptions added and Spelling Errors cleaned up.
Version 1.0: Original Release.

Please download it here and do check back frequently as this blog will always host the latest version.

Instructions:
1) Download file on to your computer.
2) Uncompress the winzip file.
3) Upload it to your Wordpress themes directory.
4) Activate it in your “Presentation” section of your Wordpress Admin.
5) Enjoy or modify, but please leave the credits!

I love some feedback on the coding and design as I am interested in improving my CSS programming skills, however please be gentle and constructive as this is my first ever Wordpress theme release. Also do note that I am a designer right brain type, and my left brain coding is really not the best!