During my research, I ran across several organizations that devoted themselves to nurturing writing in young adults. When I was a kid, I always knew I wanted to write (Rolling Stone, here I come!), but didn’t have the resources to give me that bit of push and support at the time. So, when I came across these fantastic foundations, I was ecstatic to learn that they exist. And, to know that they are supporting this creative medium today is a beautiful thing.

So, my heart had a passionate discussion with my mind. Together, they came to an understanding. Instead of talking about non-profit content strategy today, time was better spent calling attention to the organizations that help to foster creative writing in teens. Whether the work be poetry, literature, song, spoken word or other medium, this subject is more important, I believe. I’ll talk about content strategy another day.

On that note, I’m going to keep it short and sweet and ask that you take a moment out of your day to check out these fabulous organizations and the work they’re doing in their respective communities. If you want to shine a spotlight on a special foundation close to your heart, don’t be shy!

• WriteGirl
• Girls Write Now
• Pongo Teen Writing
• Get Lit
• Gemini Ink
• Youth Speaks
• Philly Youth Poetry Movement
• Capitol City Young Writers
• The Telling Room
• Young Chicago Authors

No wonder I was feeling uninspired lately. With each project I took on, I drove myself to the brink of insanity worrying whether I would be able to come up with enough visual interest to satisfy the client and impress my peers. I was all but ignoring the context I was designing in or who I was designing for. I was worried about the form more than the function. And ultimately, like my daughter reaching for a pacifier for comfort, I found myself relying on the current trends of the day as my safe haven.

“Technology over technique produces emotionless design.”

But with each button, texture and gradient I became increasingly dissatisfied with the end results. Was it visually pleasing? Probably. Did I receive accolades and peer praise for what I was producing? Yup. Did I satisfy the client? Most assuredly. Was it any good? That’s probably an unfair, subjective question but, in my opinion, no. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my portfolio had become about the bling and lacked any real meat on the bone. And, as Daniel Mall says, “Technology over technique produces emotionless design.”

I know what you are thinking right now, “Erik, you have one of those personality quirks that causes you to not like your work upon completion.” That’s partially true. But, upon further analysis of my work, I found the more I crammed into a project, the less coherent and cohesive it became.

I wish I could fault the internet and its abundance of visual stimuli for my design personality disorder but the blame lay squarely on my skinny shoulders. I questioned nothing. I didn’t attempt to challenge myself. I wasn’t pushing my own boundaries by working outside of my comfort zone. I simply wasn’t growing.

I knew I needed to take a couple of steps back and reassess everything about my role as a designer and the processes I was taking to reach the goal of a particular project. I needed to shut off the “noise” and go back to square one. Once I did, I had a pure “ah hah” moment that has forever changed me. I became aware of my inability to objectively edit my work. I had morphed into a decorator, piling on effect after effect, which does very little to solve any problem. I hadn’t established a filter for which I could determine what was necessary and what was not in a given project. I didn’t possess the necessary skill set to design with restraint.

Knowledge is power

I don’t have any formal training as a designer. Everything I knew, to that point in my career, was built from talent, gut instincts and emulation. But these traits alone were getting me nowhere. My grasp of design principles was rudimentary at best and I was only vaguely familiar with the rules. This meant I didn’t really know which rules I could break and why.

So I put the computer to sleep and started immersing myself in the craft of design and not the how-to. I stopped reading application tutorials and, for months, read and re-read everything I could get my hands on about design principles. Books like “Thinking with Type” by Ellen Lupton, “Josef Müller-Brockmann: Pioneer of Swiss Graphic Design” by Lars Müller and “Making and Breaking the Grid” by Timothy Samara, became my scripture. (Editor’s note: There are many more, but these three became represented the starting point for me.)

I discovered new found inspiration learning about the history of and theories behind my profession. I was learning the why and not the how and slowly starting to understand that design is eye candy if it had no purpose.

“Confusion surrounds the criteria for judging design quality; the eye is wearied by lack of content, aesthetically veiled.”

Successful design does not lie in the decoration, but in the totality of the solution derived from the problem at hand. When applied to my own work, when I decide to use a texture, a color, a font or any other design element, it’s because the solution calls for it and not because I am seeking praise, acceptance or trying to fill a perceived void in the work. It’s cliched, but I was learning that the work was complete when there was nothing more I could remove, not add.

“… when we can focus on less, we can ensure that the less is the best it can be.”

By stripping my work down to the bare necessities, I found that I was forced to insure what was on the page was there for a reason greater than stimulation. Put in a more eloquent way on a recent Drawar post, “… when we can focus on less, we can ensure that the less is the best it can be.”

Design less ≠ boring design

Am I saying there is no place for decoration in design? Absolutely not. But, if you are adding decoration for effect, and not cause, you may want to consider your reasoning. Don’t fall prey to the misconception that stripping your designs down to what is necessary somehow means your work now lacks personality. Continue to work with what is necessary for the task at hand. The solution is not in the addition. It’s actually in the subtraction.

Of course, the type of site you have will play a role in the amount of times your content will change. If you sell products, then new products and corresponding content should be updated frequently. If you have a magazine, blog, periodical type site, then your content should be up to the minute. Studios, agencies, artists? All new work should be immediately added to your portfolio.

A great way to keep your content fresh is your blog. Depending on your type of business, you should not let more than a week go by without a new entry. In a perfect world, blog updates should take place every day, if not sooner, but I’m a realist. Your blog is your constant voice, so don’t stop talking. Consider creating a content calendar to keep you on track and at the ready with subject ideas. If you lack the time to write yourself, work with a freelance writer to do it for you. Ghost blog writers are pretty popular and ease the stress of having to write a blog in addition to everything else you do.

Don’t forget about the little things such as an updated client list, new contact information, fresh meet the team (photos/bios), news, special promotions, etc. These are things that can be easily overlooked yet require a small amount of time to do.

For businesses that feature evergreen content on their site, a good rule of thumb is to perform a content audit every six months to determine how your content is meeting your users’ needs. What’s working for you, what isn’t? What pages are getting the most visits and why? How is your SEO performing? Has your message changed? A content audit is the best way to address the state of your content… The state of your site.

What I want to show you today is how to include a font, from the Google Fonts library, into your WordPress theme. If you are not a roll up your sleeves and do-it-yourself kind of person, you probably want to use a plugin like WP Google Fonts to accomplish your needs. Plugins, like this one, will give you automatic access to all of the fonts in the library but I find plugins like this to be overkill.

But, hopefully you are like me and understand that fonts are not interchangeable like a pair of socks. In fact, just because it’s in the drawer, you don’t necessarily have to wear them (I’m looking at you Christmas gift from 3 years ago still in the package). You should spend some time thinking about the fonts you are using within your projects and why. But, I’m digressing into a topic that is suited for its own blog post. On to the tutorial.

Adding code to your header.php file

I’ve seen similar tutorials that simply say, “copy and paste the code from Google Fonts into your header.php file,” and you are in business. In fact, on the Google Fonts Getting Started page, they tell you to do exactly that. And, you are not wholly incorrect here but you need to understand that the Google Fonts quick tip is not taking into consideration if you are developing a site for a CMS or not. They are simply showing you what the end result should look like.

If you are developing a WordPress theme, it’s recommended that you not edit the header.php at all and you should take advantage of the wp_head() function and action hooks when applicable. If this sounds a bit over your head, don’t worry. My method is just as simple but will save you headaches in the long run. If you would like to learn more about this function, definitely head over to the Codex for some seriously geeky speak.

Before we begin, you will have to open up the header.php to make sure you have the proper function before the closing <head> tag. Your file should look like the following.

     <?php wp_head(); // Do not delete this line or your world will come to an end ?>
</head>

The PHP comments are something we include in all of our projects and is meant to be our sad attempt at comedy. But the message is clear. Once that code is included, do not touch for any reason whatsoever!

Adding code to your functions.php file

Now, with all of that out of the way, let’s add a font to our theme. I’ve chosen Neuton, by Brian Zick, and the weights I’m going to include are Normal 400, Normal 400 italic and Bold 700. At this point, I need to decide if I want to use the standard method, with a link to Google Fonts stylesheet to serve my fonts or the Javascript method. The latter will give me more flexibility but may be a bit too complex for this tutorial. But I will show you how to add your Google Fonts using either method. You can also use the @import method without touching your functions.php file but I almost never use this method. It’s simply a personal preference and you will eventually formulate your own based on your workflow.

Standard Method

If you have chosen the standard method, add the following code to your functions.php file if you are developing a parent theme. Note that the opening and closing <?php ?> tags will not be necessary, if you already have an existing functions.php file.

<?php
 
/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Register & enqueue stylesheets
/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
 
add_action( 'init', 'wap8_google_fonts' );
 
if ( !function_exists( 'wap8_google_fonts' ) ) {
	function wap8_google_fonts() {
		if ( !is_admin() ) { // we do not want this to load in the dashboard
			// register Google Fonts stylesheet
			wp_register_style( 'wap8_google-fonts', 'http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Neuton:400,400italic,700', '', '', 'screen' );
 
			// enqueue Google Fonts stylesheet
			wp_enqueue_style( 'wap8_google-fonts' );
		}
	}
}
 
?>

This may look a bit complicated at first, but it’s quite simple to understand and is a fool proof way of adding an external stylesheet to your WordPress theme. We are using the both the wp_register_style() and wp_enqueue_style() functions to accomplish this. The former takes five parameters:

• Handle $handle – A unique name for the stylesheet which will be used to identify the script later with wp_enqueue_style()
• Source $src – The URL where this stylesheet can be found. Notice here, I have added the URL provided by Google Fonts.
• Dependencies $deps – Let WordPress know if this stylesheet depends on another, therefore loading it after its dependencies. In this case, it does not, so we simply pass an empty string.
• Version $ver – Let WordPress know if this stylesheet has a version number. Google Fonts did not provide one and for the sake of this tutorial, we will also pass an empty string here.
• Media $media – Let WordPress know which media this stylesheet is targeting. In our case, we are targeting screen.

Once we have properly registered our stylesheet, let’s enqueue it by adding wp_enqueue_style( 'wap8_google-fonts' );. Notice that I passed the handle through this function which, in layman’s terms, means load this stylesheet. At this point, you are now free to add your fonts to your style.css file like so.

p {
     font-family: 'Neuton', serif;
     font-style: normal;
     font-weight: 400;
}

Javascript Method

If you are looking for additional granular control, you may want to use the Javascript method instead. It’s best practice to include the code provided in an external Javascript file, but if you are not quite comfortable with that, you can always add the following to your functions.php file.

<?php
 
/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Google Fonts Javascript Code
/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
 
add_action( 'wp_head', 'wap8_google_fonts' );
 
if ( !function_exists( 'wap8_google_fonts' ) ) {
	function wap8_google_fonts() {
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
  WebFontConfig = {
    google: { families: [ 'Neuton:400,400italic,700:latin' ] }
  };
  (function() {
    var wf = document.createElement('script');
    wf.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https' : 'http') +
      '://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1/webfont.js';
    wf.type = 'text/javascript';
    wf.async = 'true';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
    s.parentNode.insertBefore(wf, s);
  })(); </script>	
<?php		
	}
}
 
?>

As you can see, with this method, we are using the wp_head() action hook to add the Javascript code inside of our site’s <head> tag. At this point, you are now free to add your Google Fonts to your stylesheet.

Conclusion

I hope I’ve made the process of adding your own Google Fonts to your WordPress theme seamless and pain free. If not, let me know. Also, be sure to drop in, from time to time. I plan on writing another post on how to use this fonts in the WordPress editor without the use of a plugin.

So, after many days (and nights) of pondering, we decided that we just needed to be ourselves. Our crazy, overworked, terminally hopeful selves. And, in doing so we discovered that it was okay to be us. That each of our personal stories was what really mattered, what users really wanted to hear. And, being able to put that in our own words, speaking to whoever is reading our profiles on a personal level, is actually cool. Even for someone like me, Miss none of your business, it was refreshing to tell my little story. Share a bit about myself that maybe someone out there may find interesting or relatable in some way.

The reason we spent an incredible amount of hours on this area is because it is one of the most visited sections of the We Are Pixel8 website. People inherently want to know about other people, especially if they’re interested in your product / brand. They want to find out who you are, why you do what you do and why they should invest in your company. How many times have you visited a site you were interested in and read that person or company’s bio / about us / our story page(s)? Probably quite a bit and this is why you your content makes a difference here.

Here are a few things to think about when creating a compelling profile page:

1. It’s not the amount of words that creates a memorable message. It’s the right words. Don’t get caught up in the length of your message. Remember, quality over quantity.
2. Does your content represent you? What I mean is, is it your voice? When people read it will they walk away having a better understanding of who you are? Or, will they just get a quick little nondescript bio and nothing more?
3. Is your story compelling? I know we all haven’t lead the lives of our heroes, but it doesn’t mean your story isn’t a compelling one. What you may think as boring, someone else will think as incredibly interesting.
4. Don’t be afraid to be different. Standing out in a crowd is a good thing, if done the right way.
5. Just be yourself. I know that sounds incredibly cliche, but it really is true. Turn your crazy light on and let it shine.

Check out these varied profile pages for a bit of inspiration:

• Pencils of Promise
• Rock, Paper, Scissor
• G’nosh
• Jill Bliss
• Pulp Fingers

Your profile page is a reflection of you. What do you want your users to know?

<?php endwhile; ?>
 
<div class="pagination">
	<p class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link( __( '&laquo; Older Posts', 'wap8' ) ) ?></p>
	<p class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link( __( 'Newer Posts &raquo;', 'wap8' ) ) ?></p>
</div>
 
<?php endif; else : // no posts found ?>

So what’s wrong with this code? Technically, nothing at all. You are simply hooking into the next_posts_link() and previous_posts_link() to show the “Older” and “Newer” post links. But, when you check out your source code, in the browser, you will notice that there is an empty div tag at the end of your posts. And, if you are anything like me, you hate empty div tags!

Well, fear not. There is a simple way to avoid those pesky empty divs from destroying your otherwise beautiful markup with a simple function and conditional statement.

Step 1: The function

I like to keep my development workflow and simplistic as possible. So, instead of writing extra lines of code every time I need to check if pagination is needed, I created a simple function to do the job for me. Open up your “functions.php” file and add the following. I recommend placing this at the end of the file, right before the closing <?php ?> tag.

/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Pagination test
/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
 
function wap8_show_posts_nav() {
	global $wp_query;
	return ( $wp_query -> max_num_pages > 1 );
}

In a nutshell, all we are doing here is checking if there is more than one page to display with this loop. Nothing fancy or complicated here. Same the file and let’s move on.

Step 2: Add the condition to the loop

Remember the block of code I showed you at the beginning of this post. Well, we need to modify this to work with our function. Change that block of code to the following:

<?php endwhile; if ( wap8_show_posts_nav() ) : ?>
 
	<div class="pagination clear">
		<p class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link( __( '&laquo; Older Posts', 'wap8' ) ) ?></p>
		<p class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link( __( 'Newer Posts &raquo;', 'wap8' ) ) ?></p>
	</div>
 
<?php endif; else : // no posts found ?>

As you can see, after the endwhile, we add a conditional check using our function. If there is more than one page, show the div, if not, move on and do nothing.

That’s it. Happy WordPress developing!

I know that it is 2012 and we have our first African-American president in the White House. We can all eat at the same counter, drink from the same water fountain and choose our own seats on the bus. But, let’s not allow these progresses to cloud our vision or assume that we have arrived to the land that Dr. King dreamed of. Sincere ignorance is more prevalent than one would like to believe.

I truly believe this all starts on the individual level. Let’s make sure that we are learning from our own mistakes. Remember that our lives do not dictate the lives of the stranger standing next to you. Embrace the fact that this planet is filled with more diversity than the human brain can truly comprehend. Once we have closed our minds to the vast array of possibilities of the human condition, we have planted our own seeds of stupidity.

Until I can get those thoughts together, I will wallow in the gooey cuteness of this video.

So, why aren’t you doing it? I ask this because if you’re reading this blog, it means you’re not doing any of the activities mentioned in the previous paragraph. It means that you’re currently connected to a device that is disconnecting you from what you really should be doing. Hello, my target audience.

You’ve told yourself that this year is going to be different. You’ve given yourself a day off, or two, or three to enjoy the holidays. You promised your family and friends that you’d shut the office door and delight in their presence…and maybe presents. But, man, are you having a hard time of it! You tell yourself: just one more Tweet, just one more email check, just one more phone call. No one has to know and you won’t do it again. Uh-huh.

When I was younger, my parents always said to enjoy your time on this Earth. Life really is short and in the end, it’s not memories of your work that you take with you. Of course, it was much easier back then when social media meant visiting your neighbor’s house. Nowadays, we are taught to always be connected, no matter what. You go out to dinner and the couple sitting next to you spends their entire time either talking into or punching away on their phones. So much for being social.

“It’s okay to hit the pause button. It’s okay to give yourself some time to breathe and reboot. It’s okay to enjoy a part of your life that isn’t work.”

I know it’s hard not working, even during the holidays, when there are a dozen things that still need to get done and if you don’t do them, no one will. But, I have news for you holiday workaholics. It’s okay to hit the pause button. It’s okay to give yourself some time to breathe and reboot. It’s okay to enjoy a part of your life that isn’t work. The clocks will still tick, the sun will still rise in the morning and there’ll still be a gazillion college bowl games every holiday season.

So, what do you say? Just take a deep breathe and put your iPad down, turn your phone off and walk away from your computer. Let’s do it together. I’m going to stop writing right now and watch last night’s “American Horror Story” on the DVR (Is that show beautifully strange, or what?) while I wrap gifts. What are you going to do?

First on the list, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty written by Andrew Bolton with photography by Solve Sundsbo. The guy was a fashion genius and although his life ended abruptly, he will forever be remembered for his bold, uncompromising and influential designs.

His style turned the fashion world on its head and I love him for that!