Background by Matthew Skiles.

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 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!

One of the cardinal sins in the design community is stealing someone’s work and calling it your own. About a month ago, a good friend notified me that his site and portfolio were completely ripped off by a guy he found on ThemeForest. The guy basically took his entire portfolio, slapped a new logo on it, and uploaded it to his domain. My friend was distraught about the whole situation and had no idea what to do. As a Christian, he wanted to help the person, and wasn’t sure what the best approach would be. Obviously, he wanted to get the stolen portfolio taken down. At the same time, he didn’t want to come off as merciless or cruel by completely embarrassing and discrediting him by blasting him throughout the halls of twitter and Facebook (which seems to be a common practice lately). This got me thinking: What’s the right way to deal with a design ripoff?

Step 1. Direct Contact

For most design ripoffs, it’s very simple to get a site taken down by simply sending an email to the offending party letting them know you know about their site. Some people take the nice guy approach and hand-craft a nice, civil email stating:

“Hi there, I noticed that your site bears a striking resemblance to my own. While I am flattered you like my site so much that you wanted to use it for yourself, will you please remove my design? Thank you.”

Some people prefer a very stern email or perhaps a phone call (if the ripoff artist was so kind to have left a phone number):

“Hey buttmonkey, thanks for stealing my design, I really appreciate it. At the very least you should have changed the links to my site so I wouldn’t see your !#$^@ referral links in my Mint stats, you #&$%#@ moron! If you don’t take it down immediately, my lawyer will be all over your butt like flies on a zebra. By the way, you’re a moron.”

For me, I like to give them the opportunity to remove the design, apologize and learn a lesson before being called out publicly and defamed (otherwise known as Step 2):

“Hi there, a friend of mine saw your site the other day and let me know that the design had been stolen from my website and used on yours. While I am flattered you like my work so much that you want to use it for yourself, I can’t say I approve of you taking it without permission. It would be appreciated if you could have the site taken offline or replaced with a new design within 24 hours or I will be forced to take further legal action.”

If they haven’t removed the site within 24 hours, I then proceed to…

Step 2. Public Callout

If I fail to generate a reply, the designer writes back saying they won’t remove it, or they completely ignore my request, I then proceed to step 2, which involves bringing as much light to the situation as possible in an effort to discredit the designer and force him or her to realize that there are a lot of passionate people out there who have a sincere HATRED for design ripoffs and would do just about anything to get them taken down and discredited. This public callout should occur on twitter, digg, flickr, basically anywhere designers follow your work, post it there and let the fury rain down. For some, it’s as simple as tweeting out the following message and simply waiting for the ReTweet brigade to do their thing:

“Attention twitter followers, please explain to @frankiegoestohollywood that ripping my portfolio design is not cool http://www.awesome.com”

For a lot of designers, this is actually the first step, mainly because they are alerted by someone on twitter so they simply retweet it to get it squashed immediately. However, I think it’s good form to first email or call to give them an opportunity to take it down, apologize, and move on, but some designers will quickly point out, “Well, if they aren’t going to bother asking me to use my design, why should I be nice about it?”

Step 3. Contact Their Hosting Provider

If public defamation of character and public ridicule are not enough to get the design taken down, you’re going to want to deal with someone at a higher level than the rip-off artist: their hosting company. In most cases, this person is going to be hosted by a low-cost provider  like GoDaddy or Dreamhost or 1and1. I mean, if they’re too cheap or lazy to get their own design, they’re probably not interested in paying a lot for hosting. Just a hunch. Now, you are going to want to first do a WHOIS lookup to find out who registered the domain, where they registered it, and what nameservers they have the domain pointed at (which, in turn, will tell you who the host is). In the event they ARE with a hosting company and don’t have their own nameserver and personal hosting system (which would be pretty rare for someone that rips off design) you should be able to easily contact the hosting company and explain the situation. Simply show them your site, then direct them to the site of their customer who ripped your design off and you typically can get them booted off that host pretty quickly.

Step 4. Contact a Lawyer

For me, this is a last resort, but sometimes is necessary. If possible, consult with a lawyer that specializes in Intellectual Property because they will know the most about dealing with this sort of situation, especially in regards to trademarks, copyrights, and patents. In most cases, they will hit them with a Cease & Desist, which basically is a court order to stop using your design or be faced with a lawsuit or possible criminal charges. Hopefully it never goes this far, but honestly, it could happen to you and you need to be prepared to take any and all steps to ensure your hard work is not taken advantage of.

Step 5. Wall of Shame (Optional)

Now, if your name is Tim Van Damme and you’ve been ripped off by so many people you can barely keep track, I recommend putting together a site that showcases the various ripoffs and includes a (nofollow) link to their site (why give them any search engine juice?) to remind them every day that you know they ripped you off and they will be enshrined in your Wall of Shame until they decide it’s not worth the hassle anymore. Also, I would recommend signing their email address up for as much spam as possible, along with a daily email reminder with links to great design resources for learning how to design websites. Again, as mentioned, this step is entirely optional.

Atlantica – $30

One of the most popular authors and a guy I look up to, epicera, really hit a home run with the Atlantica theme, offering one of the most beautiful and unique themes available on ThemeForest to date. Buy this theme

Pacifica – $30

Another theme by epicera, he doesn’t miss the mark with his latest, Pacifica, which is another beautiful and highly functional theme based off the Atlantica series. Buy this theme

Noctis – $25

This is probably the most undervalued theme on ThemeForest. This theme is one of my personal favorites and really offers a high-end look for any video game or design blog. The background is beautiful and the abundance of beautiful images throughout really makes this one a gem. Buy this theme

WordFolio – $35

WordFolio is one of the more popular themes on ThemeForest, and for good reason. It is a gorgeous theme with a really unique jQuery slider to showcase your portfolio items. Buy this theme

Twicet – $35

From one of the most popular authors, Kriesi, Twicet is a very clean, easy-to-customize theme with a very minimalist look and feel. Buy this theme

Stylemix Folio – $25

This theme is actually a very nice one, coming in with a strong color palette and a good set of features like a jQuery homepage slider. Buy this theme

Smart Portfolio – $25

A great theme for sharing your portfolio, contact info, and social media sites you use, Smart Portfolio is clean and simple, just the way I like it. Buy this theme

Post It – $20

Post It is a neat theme, with 4 illustrated characters and color schemes to choose from. This is a unique theme and easy to customize. Buy this theme

Parade Theme – $20

This is a hidden gem on ThemeForest. This is a very beautiful theme that includes some really nice functionality and a beautiful, elegant look. Buy this theme

Imperial – $30

Imperial is a Matt Brett theme, and it is another great video game blog theme, offering some pretty wicked features and an abundance of activity on the homepage. Buy this theme

I love WordPress. That’s why I put together my list of the 10 greatest WordPress themes ever. I tried to avoid having too many “frameworks” and obviously excluded my own themes, Gallery, DesignFolio+, and Absynthe, which could possibly have made the list (in my dreams). Please enjoy and as always, add your own suggestions and omissions in the comments.

Agregado – A beautiful and feature-robust theme from Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson released with Smashing Magazine which includes a lifestreaming component.

Grid Focus – One of the most well-known and most-used themes out there, you’ll find quite a few design pros using this theme, like David Airey and Ryan Carson of Carsonified.

Thematic – awesome foundation for developers to build child themes off of. I built the Gallery theme as a child theme of Thematic.

Cutline – One of the first themes claiming to be more than just a theme but instead “a platform on which developers and designers can easily build on, and which users can easily modify and manipulate to their needs.”

Typebased – Very well-designed and flexible theme from Woothemes designed by Magnus Jepson.

F8 – awesome for showcasing beautiful photography and portfolio elements.

The Unstandard – An atypical WordPress theme where content defines the design.

Grid-a-Licious – A unique approach to a WordPress theme, it uses jQuery to add or subtract columns as the window width is modified.

Hybrid – One of the most popular “frameworks,” Hybrid is another great foundation to develop child themes on top of, which prevents you from making changes that keep you from upgrading your parent theme in the future.

Modern Clix – Another grid-based theme, this one has a clean appearance and beautiful layout.

For a long while, the best monitor I had was the one attached to my 17″ Dell Inspiron, which was a pretty decent machine for the work I was doing on it. However, that screen started fading on the left-hand side and I was left with half-a-screen. That wasn’t a great work environment for me. Beyond that, I had my desktop in the office, which I really disliked using because it’s so far from all the action in the living room.

From family to the television, access to food/the kitchen, and even my luscious Polk bookshelf speakers, the living room is where I’ve been doing the bulk of my design work. Now that my laptop is literally “fading away,” I needed a reason to start working in my office again. However, my desktop was hooked up to a 21″ CRT beast of a monitor (which weighed in at a beastly 58 lbs.). In addition, it was extremely blurry, had poor contrast, and sat a bit too far away from me so I was always leaning forward to read the screen. Something had to be done about this situation.

Enter the SAMSUNG 2343BWX High Glossy Black 23″ Widescreen LCD monitor. Coming with an optimal resolution of 2048×1152 and a contrast ration of 20,000:1, this is the single most amazing monitor I’ve ever actually seen in person. The colors are the  brightest I’ve ever seen and I actually have to squint when the screen is all white.

Without further ado, here are some shots I took of the new setup (and yes, I’m on a PC, for all you loyal mac fanboys). Last time I checked, it uses a monitor, keyboard and mouse, same as your mac.

5. Incorporate leaves in all your designs

This may seem obvious, but any designer who knows anything understands the value of leaves in design. Rogie obviously knows what he is doing and should be commended for using leaves absolutely everywhere.

4. Be non-boring

Rogie knows best that the #4 key to being sexy is to be “non-boring.” In fact, take that a step further. To be truly awesome in sexiness, one should be “unique, bold, non-boring, and legendary.” Another life-changing set of tips from the Rogificator.

3. Build awesome plugins but don’t *actually* release them

Unreleased Twitter Search Plug-in.

I’ve received many-a-request for the elusive “Twitter Search Plugin by Rogie King” that I proudly sport on my blog’s sidebar. Rogie gave this plug-in to me after I threatened to expose his role in the movie “Brokeback Twilight.” If you desperately need the plugin, you can beg him for it but don’t expect to ever see it released publicly due to it’s power of design sexiness. Rogie wants to keep it all to himself.

2. Create a sideways hat icon

Fo' sho'.

One of the biggest things you can do to be a sexy designer is to create an icon of a dude with a sideways hat. Now, the problem here is getting the bill completely straight, otherwise, the sideways hat can come out a bit malformed. Rogie has mastered the art of the “Komodo Sideways Hat Icon Fix.”

1. Change your name to “Rogie” (pronounced RAH-jee)

In order to complete the sexy designer transformation, the last key is to change your name to “Rogie.” Now, this is purely rumor based on speculation by my cousin’s sister’s crazy uncle, but this is the absolute most essential component to becoming an out-of-your-mind designer.

If you are a fan of the tv show Heroes, you’re probably familiar with the power to paint the future. You know why they could do that? They changed their names to Rogie.

Disclaimer: This is an April Fools’ Day joke and there is absolutely no way you can be as sexy a designer as Rogie. You should, however, take note of what he has to say and learn everything you can from him, as he is one of the best in the business at what he does.

If it seems like I haven’t posted much recently on Designer&Developer, well, yes, that’s true. But to be fair, I have been extremely busy with some monstrous projects. Even with all those crazy projects going on, I still had some time to pull together a post for my buddy Jacob Gube of Six Revisions called “16 Genuine, Authentic Designers on Twitter.”

Now, I know what you’re all thinking, “Oh no, not another list of designers on Twitter, we’ve seen like 40 of those in the past three weeks.” Well, this one is quite different, listing 16 designers who’s updates and work I find quite interesting and worth a follow, if I do say so myself. Some of them you know, some you don’t. There were even a few designers a bit chafed they weren’t on the list, and for that, I do apologize. I wanted to keep this list brief, instead of finding 200+ designers which would be overwhelming to most people. If you haven’t already stopped by to take a gander, please do!

You can look forward to more posts of mine on Six Revisions as well. If you have any ideas or questions, don’t hesitate to hit me up.

10. Jason Santa Maria – jasonsantamaria.com

9. Shaun Inman – shauninman.com

8. Scott Schiller – schillmania.com

7. Kevin Cornell – bearskinrug.co.uk

6. Veerle Pieters – veerle.duoh.com

5. Matt Brett – mattbrett.com

4. Dan Cederholm, SimpleBits – simplebits.com

3. Rogie King, Komodo Media – komodomedia.com

2. Elliot Jay Stocks – elliotjaystocks.com

1. Bryan Veloso – avalonstar.com