Shopping for a good WordPress theme for your blog can be a huge challenge. How do you find one that has all of the elements you need, but still feels original? It seems like anything on the main WordPress Theme Viewer is either forgettable or inadequate, and many of us lack the technical skills to develop a fully-customized theme. Here are six quick tips to help you conquer the boring blog blues, and come out with something that original and dynamic.

Start with the WordPress Themes Directory. As you begin to identity things that work and things that don’t, you can borrow some of the searching tips below and migrate over to Google for some queries YOU think of that span the wider web.

1. Search by most recent: sometimes the newest WordPress themes are the most advanced and original, so limit your searching by including the current year, or just the past 3 months, etc.
2. Find one theme you ALMOST like, and visit the homepage of the designer of THAT theme. It’s likely that he/she has created other themes that will be up your alley. Some of my favourite WP theme designers include Allan Cole and Darren Hoyt
3. Look for themes that are compatible with the latest version of WP (at the time of writing, the current version 2.7, with 2.8 is currently in beta). Again, like tip 1, it ensures your theme will be new and pretty original — for the time being.
4. Check out people’s personal stashes of WordPress-related bookmarks on del.icio.us. (Here’s mine.)
5. Find out what specific style of WordPress theme you want, and narrow your search down to those types. For design professionals and illustrators, I’d recommend using queries like “portfolio style wordpress theme” or “photo blog.” Other possibilities might be things like “magazine style” or “2-column.”
6. Use search.twitter.com to look for themes that are making people talk. On Twitter, following entities I Heart WordPress will give you some pretty good re-tweeted tips.

Of course, any theme you choose will depend on you to take it to the next level with your customizations: modify it enough to make it truly your own.

Tips for putting the finishing touches on a business proposal. Advice for dealing with a perilous relationship. Walkthroughs on how to build a fence on your particularly sloped backyard. Questions like this can sometimes be solved with a quick Google, by asking your friends, or by taking an old-fashioned trip to the library. Sometimes, though, your question is a little too precise, a little too obscure, or a little too convoluted for those sources to solve.

Thanks to the web, there are now countless services that let you put willing experts and helpful strangers to work answering your unsolved riddles. Below is a brief tour of some of 2009′s best sources for crowdsourced answers.

For non-profits: try Urbantastic

Founded by Vancouverites Heath Johns and Ben Johnson, Urbantastic is breaking new ground for micro-volunteering. If you want to help your city become “a more friendly, more lively, more benevolent place,” you can volunteer from home by completing tasks posted by local charities. As of mid-April 2009, there is now an “Ask a Question” feature, where you can help non-profits find answers to questions ranging from marketing advice to event planning.

Sample question: Where should we get our 2009 t-shirts printed?

On the go, from your phone: try Cha Cha

ChaCha describes itself as “mobile answers.” Call 1-800-2ChaCha from your mobile phone, tweet to @chacha, or text your question to 242242, and “you’ll receive the answer as a text message in a few minutes.” It’s not as new or crazy as you think: just last week, ChaCha officially answered their 100,000,000th question (that’s one hundred million). Questions submitted by you are routed to a subject-matter-expert (a “guide”), and within minutes, you’ll have your answer.

Sample question: Who is responsible for preparation of the president’s budget?

For a business angle: try LinkedIn Answers

Since LinkedIn is the go-to social networking site for business professionals, it means you’ve got thousands of pros gathered in one place eager to establish reputations for themselves. It also means you’ve got a ripe crop of potential question-answerers ready to help you out. LinkedIn’s Answers section lets you tap into the crowd to ask any question you like, receiving multiple answers from multiple perspectives.

Sample question: Which personal finance / budgeting / money tracking / money management software do you prefer and why?

For everything from relationship advice to technology tips: try AskMetafilter

AskMetafilter is one of the web’s mainstays for crowdsourced queries. Since 2003, AskMetafilter has been providing the “hive mind” perspective on countless issues, from personal dilemmas to business propositions. You can post anonymously or with your own username, and the result is a selection of opinions, ideas and opinions that will help you make a well-informed decision. Or, just find some really, really obscure info.

Sample question: I need advice or a good book to read on how to (i)not let my career and continuing education take over my life and (ii) keep myself from being negatively transformed through stressful experiences.

For live help from a real person: try Skype Prime

Receiving advice from somebody on the phone can be a much more reassuring experience than just blasting a question out into cyberspace and twiddling your thumbs while you wait. Skype Prime connects you in real-time to somebody whose background relates to the help you need, and lets you talk via Skype to walk through your issue. It is a paid service, though, which might be a deal-breaker for people looking for easy online answers.

Sample question: Can somebody show me how to use the clone stamp tool in Photoshop?

For in-depth research and oddball inquiries: try Wikipedia’s Reference Desk

If you can’t make it to your local library, the next best option is Wikipedia’s Reference Desk. Think of it as your opportunity to ask a helpful, diligent expert the weirdest questions you can think of. Although Wikipedia often gets a bad rap in academic circles for being a little too lax on its fact-checking, the fact is that anybody who is dedicated enough to pour hours of effort into editing a public encyclopedia is likely a smart, diligent person.

Sample question: What’s a word meaning misplaced nationalism?

For well-researched answers you have to pay for: try Uclue

Uclue calls itself “a professional, fast, and inexpensive research service.” Name your price (how much you’re willing to pay for an answer), and you’ll have yourself a crew of researchers out looking to earn that bounty. Staffed by former Google Answers Researchers, Uclue specializes in digging up the details on any topic imaginable.

Sample question: How to change your identity (UK)?

Being self-employed in a city like Vancouver makes you fortunate: with good transit, good people and good cafes, the only real challenge in this city is actually doing a good job. But since we know you’ve already got that covered…what you really need is a place to have client meetings.

1. Try the library

With 22 branches strategically placed in the most convenient locations all across Vancouver, the library is the most obvious (and yet the most surprising) choice for a business meeting. Vancouver has committed to providing free wireless internet in every location, and if you don’t mind embracing the “community” feel, nothing beats a library as a quiet space for smart people.

2. Do coffee

Your favourite local coffee shop is moonlighting as a prime location for your next meeting. Here in Vancouver, it’s almost harder to find a coffee shop that doesn’t have wireless: every Waves location will hook you up for free, and most Blenz, Wired Monk and Bread Garden Urban Cafe locations will, too. Even at Starbucks, all it takes for free wi-fi is a registered Starbucks card – I carry an empty one around in my wallet for just that purpose.

3. Join the club

Your meeting could be happening in a Gastown loft with view of the Burrard Inlet and the North Shore mountains, in a comfortable-yet-stylish space with exposed brick, floor-to-ceiling windows and ready access to the city’s best coffee. Yeah, it’ll set you back a monthly membership fee, but you’ll also be part of Workspace, one of North America’s pioneers in shared spaces. The meetings might just be worth it. (You can also try The Network Hub on Richards Street, available at $20/hour for our kind of meetings)

4. Chow down

The breakfast meeting is a classic, and if you’ve got a client you’re comfortable enough with to eat pancakes and talk business at the same time, then Vancouver has a couple options. Every De Dutch location has free wireless. All Cactus Club shops (for a lunch or dinner option) can feed you broadband and beefsteak, and The End Café on Commercial can give you coffee, food and internet (and big tables).

5. Centre yourself

In January of 2009 Vancouver City Council passed a motion to start rolling out wireless for all Community Centres in Vancouver. It’s not ready yet, but most of the Centres have a good amount of tables and chairs ready to be inhabited by entrepreneurs like you.

Tools & Resources

• Find a wifi-enabled coffee shop in your neighbourhood
• Read some tips on coffee shop working from Vancouver’s most notable mobile meeter

Where were you when you started taking Twitter seriously? For me, it was on the bright red couches by the fireplace at the food court in Metrotown, when my friend Zach Bulick took 20 minutes to spell it out for me. It was in September 2008, and I had a cold at the time.

“It just seems so frivolous,” I insisted between sniffles. “It’s like reading the Facebook status updates of strangers.”

“It seems like that at first,” Zach countered. “But start thinking outside the box and you’ll come up with some amazing ways to use it.”

Because Twitter is basically people blogging in under 140 characters, you can tap into a lot of information very quickly. Zach pointed out that CNN was using using it to gather instant feedback from viewers, and that Comcast (at least I think it was them) was using it to offer a new kind of customer service. They’d use search.twitter.com to find messages where users are complaining about their company or services, then get in touch with them instantly to see how they could help.

I realized then how Twitter could work for the organization I work for, a non-profit in Vancouver called Union Gospel Mission. We could educate people about homelessness. Give people an unprecedented glimpse into the street-level work we do. Network with other agencies like us to share resources. Build relationships with influential bloggers. Share progress towards fundraising goals. Offer admin support to donors who need it. And since that conversation with Zach, that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do as @ugm on Twitter.

I have a feeling that Twitter could work for your business, too, and it’s just a matter of thinking it through and coming up with a good strategy.

1. Gather the tools and learn the terms

Compared with the familiar territory of blogging, Twitter is a whole new world. You’ll learn the lingo and lay-of-the-land quickly, but it’s always nice to have help. Once you set up your account, you should:

• Find out what you don’t know.Twitter’s Getting Started page will help you decipher the meaning behind the initials, symbols and abbreviations littering the landscape of Twitter. If you’ve got time for a quick video, Vancouver’s Miss604 walks you through a thorough tutorial of what you need to know.
• Download TweetDeck. Twitter isn’t really a website, so don’t treat it like one: it’s a non-stop stream of interrelated communications, and you need the right tools to manage it all. TweetDeck is to Twitter as Outlook is to email. This application will let you manage your Twitter experience with greater ease and better returns.
• Augment your arsenal of Twitter tools by exploring the tools and tricks available to you as Twitter user. .

2. Find the key influencers in your area

In every industry and every geographic area, certain Twitter users have more influence than others. It might be because of their expertise, their personality, or just the number of people following them. As a businessperson, it’s a good idea to follow these key influencers — it’s good, old-fashioned networking. It keeps you in the know, and helps establish your presence as a fellow like-minded expert. (You can use a service called Twellow to identify who these individuals are.)

3. Listen to what people are saying

Leave the monologuing for the theatrical types — it’s your foremost priority to hear what other people are saying before adding to the noise. The better you understand the culture, the more effective you can be as a participant — that goes for life and for Twitter. If you can get a handle on the nuances of this communication style — the type of Tweets that plummet and the type that soar — you’ll be better equipped to contribute content that is valuable, unique and compelling (more on that in step 5).

4. Metrics and Monitoring

• Monitor terms that pertain to your business or industry. It’s incredibly useful to see what Twitter users are saying about your business, your industry, your products or your work — consider it a free, unfiltered focus group. You can automatically monitor Twitter for specific updates in a few ways: TweetDeck can bet set up to constantly monitor up to 10 terms that you select. Or, if you use RSS, you can do a search on Twitter Search, then subscribe to the feed for that query. (Leave us a note in the comments if you need help with that step.)
• Define what you will consider “success” as you venture into Twitter. Is it how many people are following you? How many replies you receive weekly? How many visitors Twitter sends to your website? By developing clear standards early, it will keep you focused. It will also act as an early warning system to let you know when you need to start adjusting your strategy.

5. Contribute content that counts

Don’t spam your Twitter followers with sales pitches and ad copy. Instead, try to mine your business for engaging stories, interesting angles and thoughtful approaches that you can share. This is easier than you think: nobody knows your business like you do. What are the “front lines” in your business? If it’s the guys in the shop, sit down with them weekly to find out more about a project they’re working on. If it’s a team of programmers, plumbers, pro soccer players or professors, tune into the day-to-day and discover the unique aspects of your organization that nobody else knows about. As you learned in step 3, this is a conversation, not a speech. When you enter Twitter as a business, you are being invited into someone’s living room. Do your best to add commentary and ideas that will add value, and you will be rewarded.

Got questions? Want to chime in with your own tips, tricks or tools for using Twitter? Comments are open 24/7, and we’re here to help.

Knowing your way around keyboard shortcuts can make every digital design task approximately a billion times faster. When in situations where I’m training another computer user, I often notice that even the most basic shortcuts are ignored, adding chunks of seconds to every minute: switching applications, copying-and-pasting data opening new documents. The seconds add up over a career’s length, and your keyboard inefficiency becomes like a lead weight.

Sometimes, though, I can’t remember a keyboard shortcut no matter how hard I try. That’s where PhotoJojo’s keyboard shortcut skins come in: they help designers learn photo-editing shortcuts visually. Simply put, they’re amazing and I want one.

“I have an idea,” Neil was saying. I was in Vancouver when Neil called from Calgary. We were getting ready for my year-long stint with Elbowroom, and Neil was pitching me one of our first collaborative projects. “Whether it’s a newsletter or a website, I don’t know, but we need to figure out a way to talk design with our clients on a regular basis.”

“When you get to Calgary,” he continued, “Let’s figure this out.”

Neil’s idea to transmit design-related content to our clients, suppliers and friends eventually transformed into a widely-read graphic design blog covering everything from new technology to corporate re-brands. Two years later, Elbowruminations has now published a total of 140 posts, which have garnered 105 comments from our readers. Today is our two-year anniversary of the first post on Elbowruminations, and we thought it would be fitting to mention a few highlights of our first couple years.

1. THE LIBRARY DEFENDERS

I think one of the most exciting times to be a design blog like us is when the people responsible for the design piece you just critiqued end up stopping by to defend themselves. Case-in-point is the Calgary Public Library.

Neil posted a piece dressing-down the Library’s mystifying transit ads, labeling the ad “a few letters short of a bad first novel.” Library representative Grant Kaiser was quick to visit the comments section. “Libraries face 200 years of stereotyping,” wrote Grant. “With a $100 million advertising budget perhaps we could begin to fight it.”

We’re not looking to make people angry or hurt their feelings, but we’re excited when they start thinking more about good design. Out of this post and its comments came a design contract and a great relationship with the Calgary Public Library. What more could we ask for? Kudos to the Library for keeping an eye on their web reputation. It demonstrates a progressive, evolving institution – which ends up reflecting very well on the Library after all.

2. LONDON CALLING

Next stop is London. When the logo for the London 2012 Olympics hit the web, Elbowruminations was one of the first design blogs to cover the craziness. It was a zoo of activity around here, with a flurry of comments and inbound links helping to bring graphic design perspectives to a globe of Olympic spectators. While our thoughts on the London logo have evolved a bit, the initial eruption of discussion and noise was a joy to be in the middle of.

3. SASKATOON BLADES

On my favourite posts put together by Neil is his review of the Saskatoon Blades logo. I’d asked Neil to supply his “favourite design contribution of 2007” for our year-end round-up post, and Neil’s submission was a review of a logo for a hockey team in the middle of the Canadian prairies.

To this day, I’m still not certain if he was serious or joking, but regardless of its angle, it accomplished a couple of things. First, it was a glowing, honest and humble tribute to small-town Canada – you never get those get of adjectives on a design blog. Second, it served as an ironic roast of the design industry: in the midst of a post peppered with poise and pretense where people were gesturing grandly about global issues, Neil went in the exact opposite direction and headed to the hockey rink.

4. THE BRANDING OF CANADA

Speaking of Canadiana, Neil mentioned over email that the Branding of Canada post was one of his favourites from the past couple years. A thorough look at the visual identity of our country, this post took a tour of the stamps, passports, flag, currency, signage, and typeface of Canada. The tour led us to the conclusion that Canada’s visual brand was consistent, strong and visually appealing. Interestingly, this assessment of Canada’s awesomeness was recently affirmed by Future Brand, a New York consulting firm, which surveyed travelers and discovered that Canada’s brand is second in the world, second only to Australia.

5. THE SECOND YEAR

In 2008, we started trying out a few new things on this blog: first, we decided to get personal. With the recent site redesign, we dropped the corporate facade, showed our faces, and brandished our opinions. The design industry has always benfitted from candor and honesty, and we realized there was no point in pretending to be a huge design blog.

Second, we decided to narrow our focus. Our new tagline is “graphic design trends, tips and reviews” which is a big step away from the old tagline, “Graphic design thinking for everyone.” The thing we realized was, this blog ISN’T for everyone: it’s for small business owners and people interested in design. By making our focus and audience clear, we’re already seeing a sense of ease in the comments, and a renewed sense of clarity in our posts.

We hope you like the new approach. Our intent is to continue to bring you well-informed perspectives on the graphic design industry, in a way that makes you think, laugh, or at least come back again later. Tell us how we’re doing — if you’ve got thoughts about how we can do this better, some tips for stories we should cover, or even if you just want to share reactions to our two-year commemorative post, please leave a comment below. You’ll be richly rewarded with a lingering sense of satisfaction.

When I consider trying to explain the place, importance and nature of designers, it often doesn’t translate well. This 6-minute video from the UK Design Council provides a bite-sized explanation of what design is all about, and does a fantastic job. Best quote: “If engineering can be summarized as the relationship between nuts and bolts, between two man-made things, then design is about the relationship between man-made things and people.”

Thanks Olivelife!

Top 5 Designer Traits
1. Solid knowledge of the printing industry
2. A good sense of layout, balance and how to display information
3. Business savvy (strategy, branding, budgets and corporate-speak)
4. Broad knowledge of current design trends and art history
5. An inquisitive, curious, creative mind

I left out “can draw really well,” because ironically, I think you can still be a great designer without having that skill. Also amicably absent is “knowledge of the software” — I figure you wouldn’t be in the biz if you couldn’t click around the programs properly.

What do you think, dear reader? What would you add or remove from the list? Leave a comment below to state your case about what your Top 5 Designer Traits list would look like.

I think corporations are tired of being viewed as “The Man.” In an attempt to humanize themselves, giant companies have been trying to get all cuddly with us lately. “We care about the environment,” they insist, rolling out green-ish corporate responsibility policies. “And we care about YOU, too.”

Lumbering multinational corporations might be able to get all green and huggable on paper, but convincing the consumer that they’re friendly and accessible is a bit harder. That’s why we’re seeing a whole lot more attention being paid to the visual rebranding of the world’s most gargantuan retailers. Let’s start with Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is looking to swap out their dominating block letters for a logo that looks more like a spunky start-up. The new logo, which hasn’t been rolled out in Canada yet, puts a lot of distance between Wal-Mart’s bigger-is-better look they’ve embraced in the past. It’s a clear attempt to stop being seen as a towering retail monster. Now, only the W is uppercase, which is certainly a lot less threatening.

Will the new brand make a difference? I doubt it. WalMart’s brand begins and ends with being known as a giant store with cheap products. New colours and a new font might paint WalMart as a friendly giant, but it will always be a giant.

Electronics retailer Best Buy is trying to get chummy with us, too. Walking away from the tacky yellow price tag, Best Buy’s new look uses a typeface you might expect to see on one of the store’s many digital interfaces.

The old yellow tag became an urban icon, thanks to the company’s exceptionally consistent implementation of the identity at every single store location, but it has always reeked of bargain-bin, dollar-store cheapness. I’ve always felt queasy whenever in the presence of The Tag, and I am relieved to see it go.

Will new logo change the image of Best Buy being a monolithic monstrosity? It actually might. The new look feels more personal and more digital, two elements which suit the iPod generation perfectly. These days, you get to know your friends through the filter of a digital interface, whether it’s your phone or your Facebook account: interfaces are intimacy. Best Buy might be onto something.

Ever since Wendy’s founder and spokesman Dave Thomas passed on, Wendy’s has been short of a public face and voice. The idea of grandfatherly “Dave” being in charge of Wendy’s AND cooking the burgers was the restaurant’s best bet when it came to convincing us that Wendy’s was part of our family. When Dave gone, it created a significant problem for the company.

That is, until this year. Now, for the first time ever, the principal spokesperson for Wendy’s is Wendy herself. Wendy started talking and moving back in January 2008. The everpresent face on all of Wendy’s signage and packaging is now animated, and her laughter and quips are given a voice through the voiceover work of Louisa Christian.

It was a natural transition, one done with such subtlety and confidence that I doubt many of us even noticed. But next time you’re zoning out during the commercial break and a spot about hamburgers comes on, wait for Wendy to do her “it’s waaaay delicious” thing.

Not sure I believe her myself, but that’s not the point. The million-dollar question is: does the new talking logo convince us that Wendy’s is anything less than the third-largest hamburger joint in the world? She’s no Dave, but with the flawless transition from Static Wendy to Talking Wendy, it’s a good start.

You don’t have to know anything about programming: you’re literally hooking up “pipes” to one another to create your new tool. It’s like playing with Lego, only the final product is actually useful when you’re done.

It’s easier to understand when you see it in action. For our purposes, let’s say you want to keep an eye on the graphic design scene in Canada and in Calgary. You can automatically monitor blogs and websites that are talking about anything design-related in Canada. I just spend the past little while creating a system that does exactly that, and here is how it ended up:

Here is how I created the system. First, gather your sources. On many search sites, you can grab the RSS feed for the search string. So we’re going to want to go to sources like Twitter Search, Google Blogsearch and Technorati, type in searches like “design” or “Calgary graphic design” then find the RSS feeds for each search.

Next, assemble it in Pipes. The interface (shown below at a reduced size) takes a little getting used to, but makes sense once you dive into it. From the sidebar on the left, select the type of “pipe” you want to use. You can fetch RSS feeds, CSV files, search results and more. I used the “Fetch Feed” pipe, and into each field, I copy-and-pasted the RSS feeds that I had already collected. After hooking it up to a filter that prevents duplicate content, I connected it to the Pipe Output. Voila! A sweet new way to keep your eye on graphic design in Canada and Calgary.

There are tons of different tools you can create. A short browse through Yahoo’s gallery will turn up plenty of practical, interesting tools, like an Ebay Price Watch tool or a search engine that digs through every major video sharing site. Put your brain to it, and see what tricks you can accomplish with Pipes!