Fire and Knowledge

Good taste confers a sense of almost unassailable superiority upon its possessor. This is the primary reason that, in our society, people from different social classes do not freely interact with one another. They cannot stand each other’s taste. More specifically, the people who are higher up in the social hierarchy are utterly contemptuous of everything that the people beneath them enjoy (movies, sports, television shows, music, etc.).

–Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (UK Edition, 2004), p. 125

There are several ways to perform almost any act – an efficient, workable, artistic way and a careless, indifferent, sloppy way. Care and artistry are worth the trouble. They can be a satisfaction to the practitioner and a joy to all beholders.

–Scott and Helen Nearing, The Good Life, p. 314

The less sophisticated [print designers] lament on our behalf that we are stuck with ugly fonts. They wonder aloud how we can enjoy working in a medium that offers us less than absolute control over every atom of the visual experience. What they are secretly asking is whether or not we are real designers. (They suspect that we are not.) But these are the juniors, the design students and future critics. Their opinions are chiefly of interest to their professors, and one prays they have good ones.

–Jeffrey Zeldman, “Understanding Web Design“

Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple.

–E. F. Schumacher in Joseph Pearce, Small is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered (ISI Books: 2006), p. 226

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

–Jeffrey Zeldman, “Understanding Web Design“

One can have the most exquisite taste and yet … be the dreariest of creeps. And of course one can have no taste at all and be wondrously good-hearted. The snob’s error is to put good taste before a good heart – to put good taste before almost everything else. Clearly a fine thing to have, good taste can lend harmony, elegance, and graciousness to one’s life. Yet to pride oneself on one’s good taste is not only the beginning of snobbery; it is also unseemly and, in and of itself, a piece of certifiably bad taste.

–Joseph Epstein, Snobbery: The American Version (2002), p. 81

My guess is that most people would be less offended to have it said of them that they have bad judgment than that they have bad taste.

–Joseph Epstein, Snobbery: The American Version (2002), p. 77

Blueprint-WP is a new WordPress theme based upon the Blueprint CSS framework. It is built on a grid-based design, cross-browser compatible, easy to change through CSS and has a clean look. And it’s free.

Features

• Built on the new Blueprint CSS framework, thus:
• Easy to change column widths
• Easy to add columns that are cross-browser compatible
• Cross-browser typography and grids
• Small size (~8k)
• WordPress Specific
• Easy to install and modify
• Compatible with WordPress widget function
• WordPress 2.2 compatible
• Design
• Easily modify layout through custom css
• Compatible with all major browsers
• Clean and simple look
• Quick page loading

Installation

1. Download the latest version.
2. Put the archive in your wp-content/themes directory and extract it.
3. Go into your WordPress Admin section, click the “Presentation” tab, and choose the “Blueprint-WP” theme.
4. That’s it!

A subversion checkout is coming soon.

Customization

To customize the layout, copy the blueprint/css/custom.sample.css to custom.css and put your CSS overrides there. Then open up blueprint/header.php and uncomment the custom CSS line.

More

• Report a bug
• Blueprint Theme Mailing List

Recommended Plugins

Blueprint Theme should work with all WP plugins, but here are a few that I especially recommend:

• Add Meta Tags — Makes you website and posts more search-engine friendly.
• Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form — A quick and easy contact form.
• Search Excerpt — Gives only an excerpt during search, like Google. Blueprint is setup to automatically work with this plugin.

License

This has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. That means you can share it and modify it as long as you keep the link to this site at the bottom of the theme. If you do not want a link at the bottom, please contact me for opportunities.