New WordPress Theme Launched
Well it’s here! My site’s all new, fully designed for WordPress 1.5, theme - “The Low Sky”.
I had wanted for a while to update my blog to a native WordPress 1.5 theme, and had looked at all of the themes submitted to the recent theme competition on Alex King’s blog. But, to be honest, none of them had really caught my attention. Too many similar variations on a “theme”, and too little real estate for displaying content.
I looked at my then current theme (a converted 1.2 template) which actually had only been in use for a short time (from when I had started using WordPress) and thought - well I basically liked the main layout of the theme but wanted to have it as a native 1.5 theme. What to do - in the end I decided if there was none available which I could customise, then I would get a blog designer to develop one with me.
This then led me to Callista Wolf who runs the Lilac Pixels design website doing custom design and weblog hosting. Callista was keen to do the project, so one PayPal later we were away. After a lot of interested (OK, OK yes it was demanding :-)) input from me regarding creative requirements we arrived at the new theme!
My design was a departure from Callista’s usually exuberant designs, she says on her site:
It was a challenging design to work on, despite it’s somewhat simple look.
Now that is a statement I can’t resist commenting on!
“Simple”, that’s an interesting word, are we saying…
Simple as in simplistic? No obviously not.
Simple as in easy? No, I don’t believe it was easy to create the theme - nor does Callista 
I would say actually “simple” meaning timeless and elegant. I am aiming for the “simple” effect like which can be seen following the few simple brushstrokes done by a master Chinese or Japanese watercolour painter which results in a simple but beautiful painting. Like the timeless elegance seen in websites like ‘css Zen Garden‘ or Mike Meyer’s blog site.This sort of simple is the simple (timeless and elegant) effect, which however is anything but simple (easy) to achieve and definitely not simplistic. It usually takes an expert and experienced steady hand to ‘paint’ an (electronic) canvas of the sort of beauty seen in css Zen Garden.Something to aspire to.
It’s on the way with the new design, and I am looking forward to continuously improving it.
