Swell

Swell Theme

Thu, 19 May 2011 15:24:00 -0700

Swell was created to give you the experience of the Tumblr archive feature, but with 60+ customization options and insane customer support from Style Hatch.

Infinite Posts + ‘Lightbox’ View

One of the challenges of sites with an infinite scroll mode is clicking on a post, going back to the list and realizing you have to scroll back down to where you left off. The Swell premium Tumblr theme gets around this limitation by launching the posts in a ‘lightbox’ style viewer. As you browse post by post your browser will even keep track of the post URL and give you the ability to hit the back and forward buttons as you explore. We even took care of the details so that the Tumblr like & reblog bar updates as you browse the posts.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Once you have a post open you can hit the J / K keys to go to the next and previous posts to go 100% mouse free. Combine that with the infinite scrolling feature an you can explore forever. Want to close the post viewer? Hit the ESC key.

Description Reveal

To maintain a clean design a lot of the common theme features are tucked away at the top of the site design. Click on the top left triangle, the first navigation item, or go to /#!/about to expand the site description area. With the Customize > Appearance options you can add your Tumblr icon, links to various social sites, show your latest tweets, likes and posts to Flickr.

Typekit Ready

Add your Typekit kit ID to the appearance options to fully control and customize the typography in the Swell theme. Use some of the best fonts from foundries like FontFont, Adobe, P22, T-26 and Veer. To access all of the Typekit fonts you will need a paid Typekit account, but they also offer a free account with a limited selection.

Social Features

Swell has built in support for group blogs, sharing on Facebook and Twitter, Disqus, Flickr, and sites you follow. In the Appearances options you’ll also find 29 social profile icon links.

Customization Options

Minimal summary mode
When you put your site in the minimal summary mode photo, photoset, video, and audio posts will only show the image or video in the grid and when you click on the item you will see the full post in the lightbox viewer. Text, quote, link, chat and ask posts will still use the post summary length value to summarize the post in the grid.

Full post mode
This option forces the theme to show the entire post while in the grid mode. You will still need to open the post in the lightbox viewer to see notes, social features and Disqus comments.

Infinite scroll mode
Switch your site into the infinite scroll mode to allow people to continuously scroll through all your posts in the grid layout.

Show portrait in description
Add your portrait icon to the right of your site description.

Show group blog details
This option enables the author details when viewing an individual post on a group blog.

Show theme credit
By default this is option is enabled, but if you want to remove the theme credit and link to the Swell theme uncheck this option.

Post summary length
Set the character count before the theme begins to summarize the posts and add a more link. By default the option is set to 200 characters, but you can go less or much more to give viewers more of a post preview.

Theme titles
The Swell appearance options give you seven title options to change various block titles throughout the theme: description, about link (in the navigation), social links, authors, recent tweets, liked on Tumblr, and recent posts on Flickr.

Design Features

Background image
Upload a new background image to use with the theme or hit the clear button to just use a solid background color. By default the theme will tile the background image, but if you want it fixed, no-repeat or positioned to the center you can add CSS to Customize > Advanced > Custom CSS.

Site logo
Upload a site logo that will replace the title at the top left of the theme header.

Colors
Swell comes with six different color options to tweak the site’s color scheme.

Background - sets the overall site background color, just make sure you clear out the background image to see the color
Text - control the color of the text used throughout the site
UI text - this option sets the color of the all caps navigation items throughout the site, like the navigation, notes count, links at the bottom right, all cap titles in the post view and <h3&rt; tags
Accent - sets the accent color used throughout the site. In the demo site this is the blue color used for the site title, links and background for the description reveal.
Accent hover - sets the hover color for links and various accent elements
Text on accent - control the text color that is used in combination with the accent color. On the demo site this is the white text in the description reveal and pagination links at the bottom right.

3rd Party Features

Disqus
Add your Disqus Site Shortname to enable comments for your site. Click here to register for a Disqus site account.

Google Analytics
Swell has asynchronous Google Analytics tracking built into the theme, all you need to do is add your site ID to this option.

Clicky
For realtime tracking of who is on your site right now, goals, campaigns and Twitter monitoring add your Click ID. Clicky does charge for their analytics and tracking, but I highly recommend it for people who are stats junkies. Sign up for an account with Clicky.

Flickr
Add your Flickr ID to display four thumbnails of your most recently uploaded images. Use http://idgettr.com to find your Flickr ID which is different than your Flickr username.

Typkit
Want ultimate control over the typography in Swell? With Swell 1.0 Typekit is fully integrated in the appearance options. Here are the basic steps involved in setting up Typekit for your site:

Register for a Typekit account - https://typekit.com/plans Typekit offers several affordable yearly accounts, but you can always go with the free plan with access to their trial library.
Browse through the library and click + Add to Kit after you’ve selected the body and title font for your site.
While you have the Typekit Editor open go through the list of Weights & Styles (screenshot) selecting only the fonts that you need. This is typically regular, regular italic, bold and bold italic.
Once you have your two fonts selected hit the green Publish button at the bottom right (screenshot).
Go to back to Tumblr and open Customize > Appearance, find the Typekit ID field and paste in your Typekit ID. You can find the ID by opening the Typekit Editor and clicking Embed Code at the top right. You only want to copy and paste the 7-8 character ID at the bottom (screenshot).
Now paste in the font-family values for the body, title and UI fonts into Customize > Appearance. You will find it by clicking Advanced below the Selectors on the left (screenshot).
Example: “proxima-nova-1”,”proxima-nova-2”,sans-serif

Tip: Even if you don’t use Typekit you can use the Body, Title and UI font options to paste in other standard font-family stacks.

Social icon links
Add URLs to display the following social site icons below your site description. Note: Make sure you add the full URL, including “http://”.

Behance, Cargo Collective, Delicious, Deviant Art, Digg, Dribbble, Ember, Etsy, Facebook, FFFFound, Flickr, Formspring, Forrst, Foursquare, Gowalla, Last.fm, Linked In, Rdio, Skype, Slideshare, Soundcloud, Stumbled Upon, Twitter, Vimeo, generic website link, Youtube, and your email address.

Water Changes Everything. With Style Hatch and Charity Water for...

Thu, 19 May 2011 15:20:32 -0700

Water Changes Everything.

With Style Hatch and Charity Water for every five themes purchased one person has access to clean water—that changes everything.

Buy a theme & give life

Thu, 19 May 2011 15:17:06 -0700

Through Charity Water we’re providing one person with access to clean water for every five themes purchased. Why Water?

Almost a billion people live without clean drinking water. We call this the water crisis. It’s a crisis because it only starts with water — but water affects everything in life.

Health. Education. Food security. The lives of women, especially.

We can end the water crisis in our lifetime. But first we have to let everyone know it’s happening. Learn how water changes everything — and share this with everyone you know.

CLOGS - Veil Waltz The sleeve shows a magic rock floating in the...

Thu, 19 May 2011 15:13:47 -0700

CLOGS - Veil Waltz

The sleeve shows a magic rock floating in the woods, which to us embodies the dreamy atmosphere of the band’s ethereal chamber music. As Clogs puts it: “This is our new EP of assorted ephemera, cinematic soundtracks and the odd tidbit of song & instrumental musings to captivate and tease your ears for the long winter between now and March 2nd, when The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton will be released.”

Tessellation Formation 5 - Matthew Shlian Conceived over a...

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:23:00 -0700

Tessellation Formation 5 - Matthew Shlian

Conceived over a flurry of emails in the spring of this year, The Tessellation Series is an expression of intuitive design evolving from a fixed starting point. To illustrate the process by which the pattern has emerged, the series is presented as five distinct moments, or formations, in its evolution.

In each formation, three-dimensional structures spread, in seemingly random order, toward the edge of the page. Closer inspection reveals the fine pencil drawn lines of the geometric shapes from which they rise, a blueprint for a pattern that is at once unfinished and complete.

Purchase the art on The Ghostly Store

Hope, Fear and Digital Culture Only 30 years ago people did not...

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:22:43 -0700

Hope, Fear and Digital Culture

Only 30 years ago people did not make things. They would go to art galleries, buy records, read books by famous authors, and watch Hollywood movies all created by professional artists. Fast forward to the last decade—especially the last few years—and everything we know about consuming and creating has unraveled. The makers dramatically changing industries and the world forever.

Today everyone makes things. Not only has the digital age allowed people to become curators of culture, it has removed all the barriers for anyone to create. Everyone is a photographer, writer, designer, musician, film maker. Despite a recession there has never in history been a better time to create and find success as an artist.

The new documentary PressPausePlay explores the concept of hope, fear and digital culture in today’s society.

Ideas that Spread Win

In the clip above author Seth Godin talks about his experience as an author and his decision to release his book Unleashing the Idea Virus online for free without his publisher. Since the free ebook was released online it has been downloaded over five million times and lead to a hardcover version that topped Amazon’s best seller charts.

I made more money from the book that I gave away than the one I had sold. The lesson is… this changes everything. The industry is dead.
- Seth Godin

What are you going to do?

Personally I decided to take a leap of faith in early 2009 leaving the ad agency world behind with the goal of being able to find happiness in creative work that I control, provide for my family, and grow a business that gives back to society and employs other talented people. It took several months of ad agency contracts and client work, but finally in late 2010 I was able to transition from clients to truly being independent. For the first time in my career I feel like I have full creative control over what make or pursue.

Best of all getting to this point didn’t require any luck, special favors or a pile of cash. It was accomplished through seeing an opportunity and acting on it with a bit of hard work. I strongly believe that there is no reason why anyone else couldn’t do the same in this amazing time we live in.

With all of this opportunity to create and get paid for it, how are you going to take advantage of the moment?

SBTRKT is Aaron Jerome, a producer based in London. Graciously...

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:22:00 -0700

SBTRKT is Aaron Jerome, a producer based in London. Graciously allowing the music to speak for itself - even going to the length of performing behind a mask every time he plays out. -Last.fm

Identity work created by Bond Agency

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:21:34 -0700

Identity work created by Bond Agency

Hand lettering (and illustration) by Esther Aarts

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:19:30 -0700

Hand lettering (and illustration) by Esther Aarts

Aim High A part of the Words of Wisdom series by Vaughn Fender

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:13:45 -0700

Aim High

A part of the Words of Wisdom series by Vaughn Fender

"The design process, at its best, integrates the aspirations of art, science, and culture."

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:11:59 -0700

“The design process, at its best, integrates the aspirations of art, science, and culture.”

- Jeff Smith

Go Play The work of Jamie Cullen

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:10:42 -0700

Go Play

The work of Jamie Cullen

technosoul: Break.

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:08:37 -0700

technosoul:

Break.

Photo

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:05:27 -0700

brycedotvc: When in doubt, just ship. via Marc

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:01:55 -0700

brycedotvc:

When in doubt, just ship.

via Marc

Anatomy of a Mashup:Definitive Daft Punk visualized Web...

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:00:16 -0700

Anatomy of a Mashup:
Definitive Daft Punk visualized

Web technologist Cameron Adams recently created a mashup of 23 Daft Punk songs titled Definitive Daft Punk. Like any good music mashup as you’re listening it becomes easy to get lost in the track and figure out where one track begins and ends. To illustrate the layering and composition Cameron created this killer HTML5 and CSS3 visualization of the mashup. Make sure you view it in a modern browser like Chrome or Safari.

Screenstagram rickwebb: We made a Mac OSX Screensaver that uses...

Thu, 19 May 2011 13:59:32 -0700

Screenstagram

rickwebb:

We made a Mac OSX Screensaver that uses the Instagram API to show all your friends’ Instagram photos. Check it out. It’s free, and it’s rapidly become my favorite screensaver.

The Barbarians, as always, never fail to disappoint. Grab the screensaver!

triangletriangle: Cor Laffra

Thu, 19 May 2011 13:57:53 -0700

triangletriangle:

Cor Laffra

unfamiliar: Felt Mouse by Joey Roth

Thu, 19 May 2011 13:57:20 -0700

unfamiliar:

Felt Mouse by Joey Roth

gregmelander: MUSIC FOR DIETER RAMS An amazing collection of...

Thu, 19 May 2011 13:56:38 -0700

gregmelander:

MUSIC FOR DIETER RAMS

An amazing collection of songs that really capture the essence of Dieter Rams’ minimal industrial designs, by Jon Brooks. I really like number 3 and 8. via Catherine Kim