I have been working with Isaiah, from YourHead Software, on designing the user interface and icons for his latest RapidWeaver plug-in, Stacks. I’d like to tell you a little about the plug-in and show you some of the icons we developed and a little bit of the process behind developing the icons.

Slices
Each Stacks page is built from slices that are defined by you, the user. Anything from a Styled Text slice to an Image or Columns slice. You can create a complex layout quickly and with ease. Each slice needed a simple, clear icon to represent it. Isaiah had an idea of the sort of icons he was looking for to represent most of these slices. So I took his sketches and turned them into finished icons.

Interface
I also worked with Isaiah on developing the User Interface for Stacks. Below are a few of the initial ideas I came up with for the Library design and main content interface. Some were more ‘out there’ than others.

In the end we settled on the matte black Library. We also added a non-standard, classy library trigger in the lower right corner of the interface. The final UI design came out rather well, I think, and is easy to use and navigate.

Iconic
Isaiah and I were quite lucky in developing the Stacks icon. After sketching some ideas out for myself to start from I jumped right into Cinema 4D to mockup some icon ideas. Luckily these early renders were what Isaiah was looking for and the metaphor fit well with the title and functionality of the plug-in. Some of the early ideas can be seen here:

Here is the final icon we settled upon to represent Isaiah’s wonderful new plug-in.

Tags: Plug-ins, Icons, User Interface

I am pretty excited to announce our latest theme. This one is really stylish and fun to use. It sort of came together without a lot of problems and was really fun to develop. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to our latest addition — Float. Below you’ll find a few of the main features of this new theme, but for a list of everything that Float offers, have a look at the product page.

Beautiful and fluffy
Float is a light, airy design that offers you a classy choice for designing your website. This RapidWeaver theme packs a lot of options. It is a theme that is perfect for creating a website for a small business, portfolio, blog, photo album and more.

Backgrounds & headers

Float offers a huge number professionally designed, stylish background styles. The backgrounds included in this theme serve as both a header and a site background. Included in Float are 27 graphical backgrounds along with the ability to use the color picker to choose your own solid color. Or, simply hide the background altogether. View the live preview site to get an idea of the high quality, background images and watch our demo video to see all of the included backgrounds. There are also 6 blank slots for use with RWmultitool.

Sidebar
Float includes seven sidebar variations. Not only can you place your sidebar on the left or the right, but you can also choose to locate it at the bottom of the site, just above the footer. In addition to normal sidebar styles you can choose to dress up the sidebar as well. We offer an option for a 3D inset look on either the left or the right, as well as a talk-bubble-esque look for the sidebar at the bottom. Check out our demo video or live preview site to get a look at all of these options.

Find it... in style
Float incorporates a very stylish search feature into its menu bar. When a visitor to your site clicks the magnifying glass located on the right-hand side of the menu bar a search field will float up and allow them to use Google to search your site.

Stylish navigation
One of the main highlights of the Float theme is its beautiful floating menu bar. It allows users to navigate your site in style. In setting up your site with RapidWeaver, and our Float theme, you have a wide variety of options available to you.

Float allows you to:
• Change the font style and size
• Modify the background of the selected items
• Change the division lines between menu items

Float offers four fonts to choose from in the menu. It also gives you the option of three font sizes.

When changing the current selected item's appearance you have eight different options.

We've also provided five different menu divider lines.

There’s a lot more to Float, so be sure to checkout the product page.

Tags: New Theme, Float, Themes