You've strategically hit the battle platform and logo & icon design portfolio & design blog of UK based logo design pioneer, and gun-for-hire, Graham Smith—the original Logo Smith since '86.

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A New Minimal & Responsive WordPress Theme for imjustcreative

Written by Graham Smith: @imjustcreative—the original Logo Smith since '86.

Written by Graham Smith: @imjustcreative

Time has come to dust off the old website—which I have been tinkering with for a good 3 years now—to bring in the new.

The new being a fully responsive WordPress website, blog and portfolio based on the Foundation/Boilerplate Framework and a modified, by moi, Foundation theme.

I have had a couple of attempts over the last year to get my website up-to-speed, but time and money hauling my ass out in a different direction. Although my existing site was OK, I knew that under the hood it totally sucked with incredibly messed up HTML and CSS. In effect it was my live sandbox as I tried to grasp aspects of developing and coding.

The end result was a design that I pretty much like, but lacked the details I so desperately wanted but couldnt do due to lack of knowledge and experience. So the website floundered in this state for some time whilst I kept on the look out for a way to turn the tables.

Responsive

Hard to miss how much this buzz word has infiltrated our minds, and with that I realised that any new site design without being responsive would be foolish and a complete waste of time.

Last week I took the charge and started researching all that was out there for responsive WordPress themes to see if anything came up close to my existing site design. Certainly plenty of responsive themes, but only a few came remotely close to what I wanted: Ari by Elma Studio being a worthy candidate. In fact I did play with this for a day or so, but a few features lacking caused me some hurdles that I couldn’t quite overcome.

In my search I came I found some really nice Frameworks, but unless you have time and knowledges of developing these would prove to be far too technical for me to work with.

Foundation

One framework in particular, Foundation, caught my eye but I still had the same “lack o’skill” problem that plagues me in these situations. That being said I wasn’t about to give up on Framework, as it did look damn sexy, and could easily imagine my website rocking a Foundation framework.

I decided to spend some time, on a seemingly futile excersise, Googling “WordPress themes made with Foundation framework” and one entry nearly slipped my notice. I really thought that finding someone who had took the time to actually develope a bare bones WordPress theme with the Foundation Framework would be slim at best, but apparently I was being too cynical.

Not too much to read about the theme it as it is located on Github, but the developer, Drew(symo) states:

Foundation, for WordPress, is a blank starter theme with the exceptional capabilities of ZURB’s Foundation Framework and HTML5 Boilerplate.

As a neat-freak designer, it’s sometimes intimidating and frustrating looking at a WordPress theme framework that’s jam-packed with unnecessary extras and bloated code. That’s why I created Foundation, for WordPress, which offers only the necessary essentials to get your site running, with all the jazz of responsive web-design.

Features of Foundation Theme

Foundation, for WordPress, features everything ZURB’s Foundation Framework and HTML5 Boilerplate have to offer, however, some changes have been made to tailer it to WordPress, these include:

All your common WordPress template files
Orbit for WordPress, ZURB’s image and content slider tailored for WordPress, with the ability to manage your slider through WordPress
A ySlow score of 95 (in regards to ‘Small Site or Blog’)
SEO features such as an optimised Google Analytics snippet, robots.txt and Schema.org attributes
Beautiful, coda-style tooltips
Reveal for WordPress, a simple modal box by ZURB made to work in WordPress
A function to provide Google’s jQuery CDN over WordPress’ local copy
Failsafe jQuery, with a fallback to WordPress’ local copy

To Sum Up

There is a long story version which I would find all too easy to explain in fine detail so this is the short version. I basically spent, almost, every waking minute from Friday morning to midnight Sunday remodelling Drew’s WordPress Foundation theme to what you see before you now.

It’s certainly not 100%, but I am absolutely thrilled with the general layout, typography and specifically knowing that everything under the hood is lean, mean and super clean. There are a few things that need to be ironed out in terms of details as well as a few responsive type bugs.

For the most part the new imjustcreative site is a brand spanking new platform from which to show my logo design portfolio and blog articles so I really couldn’t be more pleased, more so as I managed to do it all by myself. It’s a relief to know that the backed is also running cleanly as well as the site working well on a number of mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad.

There is no way I could have managed this without the hard work that Drew put into creating the Foundation theme from the Foundation Framework so a huge thanks to Drew for that.

Do You Like This Responsive Theme?

As a little something from me to you I will be packaging this minimal and responsive WordPress theme, and making it available as a download. The core theme consists of a one column portfolio page template, two column featured project page template, two column blog and index pages.

If you are looking for a responsive and minimal style blog and portfolio, then I hope this might be of interest to you. you’ll be free to chop and change it to your heart’s content. The Foundation Framework is built on the following grid, and is just a pleasure develop and design design around.

Leave me a note below if you think you might be interested in the theme.

c
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kirby.wa says November 28, 2011 at 4:54 pm

Snazzy.

foomandoonian says November 28, 2011 at 4:57 pm

Neat. I’d probably have chosen a larger font size though. Also, at a mobile scale the main menu takes up way too much vertical space. You could easily line the buttons up in pairs. Look at CSS tricks for a great approach to this.

imjustcreative says November 28, 2011 at 6:45 pm

@foomandoonian That bugged me as well so have now removed the 3 social links at the end of the main navigation for the mobile device. Still not perfect but a lot better.

Just only started getting my head around responsive code so will take a while for me to work out how to do various things.

Patrickt010 says November 28, 2011 at 7:02 pm

@imjustcreative@foomandoonian You can try reducing the mobile padding on the li from 18px to 12px and increasing the font size to 14px, unless you are using foundations base type I feel that this looks the best and is still big enough for my ogre like fingers.

imjustcreative says November 29, 2011 at 1:59 pm

@Patrickt010@foomandoonianHave adjusted the mobile nav font to be larger, bold and ranged left? Feels more substantial now. Better?

foomandoonian says November 29, 2011 at 2:29 pm

@imjustcreative Ah, I see you went with Droid Serif. I was going to suggest either that or Georgia in reply to your question on Twitter – the only really good Serif web fonts, IMO.

I still think the size is too small. Check out this article: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/07/16-pixels-body-copy-anything-less-costly-mistake/

The mobile menu is better, yes. :)

Patrickt010 says November 29, 2011 at 5:25 pm

@imjustcreative@foomandoonian Ya it looks better aligned left. I like the smashing article below in terms of readability which is probably the achilles heel for most web sites. Here is another relavent article that might be worth reading that I am trying to adopt into either foundation or roots.

http://www.aisleone.net/2009/design/8-ways-to-improve-your-typography/

creativemoore says November 28, 2011 at 5:00 pm

Great work Graham I like it a lot.

Patrickt010 says November 28, 2011 at 5:52 pm

Good work! I have used this framework before and found Drew’s work on Github but am currently working with the Roots theme I really want to give this one a try though. I really like your use of type will be back to see if you decide to make multiple responsive sizes. (i.e. Laptop, iPad, iPhone) I feel like the iPad can support a multi-column layout.

scottpruett says November 28, 2011 at 7:03 pm

I’d absolutely make use of this theme if you release it publicly, Graham, even if its paid. I’ve been on the hunt for a simple, lightweight, and clean-coded theme for a while.

chadHbennett says November 28, 2011 at 7:18 pm

I would definitely use this theme. They saying goes “Simplicity is genius”.

42pe says November 28, 2011 at 11:34 pm

I absolutely love this framework. Kudos.

_catenaccio says November 29, 2011 at 9:09 am

Looks great. I am really interested!

froggytweets says November 29, 2011 at 11:02 am

Great job! I’d really like to try this theme. When are you planning on releasing it?

julie_holmes says November 29, 2011 at 2:30 pm

@imjustcreative – very interested in this theme as my website is in dire need of a makeover. Thx for all that you do & share

mstonge5 says November 29, 2011 at 4:47 pm

Would definitely benefit from your experience, expertise and leverage from all your worthy research as I am going through the same process (as so many other designers out there).

Thanks for everything you publish, it is a pleasure to read content and container wise !

Keep us posted on this please

JanKosutnik says November 29, 2011 at 7:42 pm

looks great and yes I would be very interested in a theme;)

byderekj says November 30, 2011 at 3:36 am

Like the “skip to content”.

JerGru says November 30, 2011 at 4:24 am

Great work! I love the new responsive site, and I would definitely love to take a look at the theme you are using. Awesome site.

Adambach says December 2, 2011 at 1:56 pm

check out how to get a Custom Logo Design at http://www.logobench.com/custom-logo-design.html

adamjgomez says December 4, 2011 at 9:34 am

Amazing site and theme. I would be interested a download of the theme. Also, thank you for introducing me to the foundation framework.

adamjgomez says December 4, 2011 at 9:39 am

Amazing site and theme. I would love a download of the theme. Thank you for the introduction to the Foundation Framework.

tsanderson says December 9, 2011 at 6:44 am

You don’t mention the article/tutorial that you ended up finding that ostensibly helped you develop your theme. Only seems right to credit that author, and provide us a how-to, since you really don’t… nice theme, but you’re not giving your fellow designers any benefits here…

imjustcreative says December 9, 2011 at 7:54 am

@tsanderson There was no tutorial. I credit the people accordingly which includes the Foundation Framework designers, a mention/credit to the developer of the Foundation WordPress theme from which I based my design off.

Not sure what else you think I should do as everything else was my own thoughts and ideas.

tsanderson says December 9, 2011 at 3:41 pm

@imjustcreative

“I really thought that finding someone who had took the time to actually develope a bare bones WordPress theme with the Foundation Framework would be slim at best, but apparently I was being too cynical.”

Sorry for the misunderstanding, the above wording makes it sound like you did not expect to find any resources from someone who had developed a barebones Foundation theme and then did find such a resource. Thinking such chances were “slim at best” and then saying that you were apparently too cynical in this view gives the impression you found a helpful resource. Again, apologies… I was misled by the wording. :)

jennygrossbard says December 13, 2011 at 6:26 am

i really like the theme! i admire your honesty and description of your own process. i know how grueling it can be, and wanted to offer you my congratulations for working so hard and coming up with something so beautiful and functional. it can be so satisfying. so… when will you make your theme available for download? :)

tranquileye says December 23, 2011 at 11:53 pm

The theme is very nice; I’d love to see it released in some form for wider use, and would love to try it out.

MatthewQuirk says December 25, 2011 at 11:07 pm

Hi, I’ve been trialling the Foundation framework as the basis for our site update. Really liking some of the customization here and I’d love to see a downloadable theme!

joeycamacho says January 2, 2012 at 9:41 pm

Definitely would be interested in seeing some downloadable templates!

amitMojumder says January 3, 2012 at 10:34 pm

yup would love to get this downloadable theme……dying for it man…….

Sherif Adel says January 23, 2012 at 6:36 pm

I love this! how I can have this theme ?

Categories: Web Development
Tagged: Foundation, framework, responsive, wordpress

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Logo & icon design portfolio and blog of UK (Seaford) based logo designer Graham Smith who is behind imjustcreative — the original Logo Smith since '86. Graham has over 24 years experience in: brand identity design, advertising, reprographics and commercial print.