For some of you who are reading this, none of these things might appeal to you.

Perhaps you prefer coffee from Caribou or some other local coffee shop. It’s also possible that you’re a beach person, and can certainly do without the mountains.

The idea of running is something that you loathe, and a hobby you vow to never get into.

In other words, you’re thinking… different strokes for different folks.

A Fun Experiment

Now I want to ask you a question, and this is aimed primarily at those of you know who know me or follow me on Twitter.

What comes to mind when when you hear the words Starbucks, mountains and running?

It’s possible that answer is nothing, or some kind of nebulous thought. Maybe you think of something random, but is there a chance that you think of me?

Do the words “Brian Gardner” come to mind?

Or even better, is “OMG, that’s totally Brian Gardner!” your reaction?

Rephrasing The Question

Ok, I’m going to repeat the question for those who might not get my point, and you can try answering again. This time I’m going to let Instagram lend a hand.

What comes to mind when when you hear the words Starbucks, mountains and running?

After clicking on those above, my guess is that things are abundantly clear, right?

Starbucks, mountains and running are clearly words associated with who I am, or for all practical purposes three words best used to describe me.

WTH is Going on Out Here?

As the legendary coach Vince Lombardi once said…

So you might be asking yourself what is the meaning behind this post, and why I’m asking you to click on my Instagram shots.

When it comes to remembering things or finding them important, psychology teaches us that “by association” is definitely one way to go. After all, that’s why companies use catch-phrases or gimmicks in their advertising.

Just ask Geico if it works.

If you are new to social media, or trying to build an online business, you might consider looking into ways to make yourself stand out.

What Are You Remembered As?

It’s no secret that when I’m not working, I’m consuming Starbucks, dreaming about the mountains or out on a trail running. And you know that because I’ve gone out of my way to brand myself as that guy.

See for yourself. Google Starbucks Addict.

So what about you?

What are the things that you do or share on social media that makes you remembered by someone? What is your jingle?

Is there something that you’ve done intentionally that makes you stand out. Better yet, are you one of the people below, who’ve successfully made me remember them?

She likes purple. He’s a proud husband and dad. She’s into Hawaii. This guy is a designer. Here’s a skydiving girl. This dude travels a lot. She loves her kids. He takes a lot of selfies.

First off, let’s get rid of the elephant in the room. Yes, I did it again. And yes, I know I said that I was going to stick with the previous design for a while.

The fact of the matter is that I have a serious problem, but I won’t apologize for it.

I love to design, to tinker and to try new things. This isn’t a surprise to anyone, and quite honestly if you thought I’d be keeping the previous design forever — shame on you. #grins

I will compensate Rafal with Starbucks for a month since I lost our side bet. The sun will rise and the sun will set today. Let’s all move on with this, ‘mkay?

Realigning My Website

I love to write, and that’s not much of a secret around here. What might baffle you is that I don’t write as often as a person who loves to write should write.

Over the last two years, my blog has been focused on things that it really shouldn’t be focused on. I’ve been doing the right things in the wrong places, and it’s time to fix that.

This should be a place where I write personally — as it pertains to who I am, what I do and around the things I love.

Unfortunately that hasn’t happened, and I’ve built a moat around my site made up of up content that has kept my soul away.

Making Changes

I love to help people, I really do. It’s one of the reason that I publish my code snippets and a majority of the blog posts here are “tutorial” in nature.

The problem is, that energy shouldn’t be used to write and publish… here.

You might wonder where it should be focused, and the answer is simple. It should be happening at StudioPress, where our users have a direct path to finding the help they need.

Here I might reach hundreds. There, I’ll reach thousands.

With that said, I’m going to move away from writing tutorials here on my blog. I’m going to create a custom post type for them, and move the existing ones I have from a blog post (with comments) to a tutorial post type (without comments).

Consider this a “heads up” on that when the time comes.

New (and hopefully interesting) Topics

One of the biggest challenges I face with my blog is the content. I realize that a lot of folks aren’t interested when I write personally, and that’s something I struggle with.

I can tell this is the case, because a majority of my personal blog posts result in much fewer comments, while the tutorial-type blog posts end up with a lot more.

I’m starting to embrace the idea that numbers aren’t everything, though, and that receiving more traffic and more comments does not equate to a successful blog.

Thankfully, I’ve finally wrapped myself around the idea that I’d rather affect a few deeply, than many on the surface. With that said, I’m going to be changing the tone of my blog and consequentially altering the things I write about.

If you’re not interested in who I am, then now is your chance to unsubscribe.

No Promises

I don’t know how long this design will last, but I do really like it. Once in a while I come up with something all by myself that I’m really proud of it.

It is times like this that really inspire me to write. And if you’re wondering about the kinds of things I will write about, they’ll be personal.

There’s a possibility some of the posts will intersect my business endeavors, but I assure you that I’m going to stop writing about “how to do this and become that”, ya dig?

More than likely you’ll see more writing about family, running, Starbucks, Sarah McLachlan and my infatuation with design.

That is who I am, and if you don’t want to read about, you know where the door is.

A year ago we released a plugin on StudioPress that was an easy to use, customizable way to display social media icons that link visitors to your various social profiles.

Well yesterday we made that experience much better. As in, completely #bueno.

Version 1.0 of the Simple Social Icons was pushed up to the WordPress plugin repository, giving you immediate access to showcasing your social media presence with scalable and retina-friendly icons. (Share the news with a tweet!)

For folks like me who own a Macbook Pro with Retina Display, this update will make placing social media icons onto a website a visually stunning experience.

Open Source Community FTW

For those of you who are wondering how we have pulled off this substitution, you can thank the folks over at Entypo for the incredible icon fonts that they offer.

Thanks to the open source community these icons are SIL Open Font licensed, which enables font authors to release their work under a common license that allows bundling, modification and redistribution.

What’s New with Simple Social Icons

Aside from the icon font replacement, we took into consideration the suggestions we’ve heard from our users. One popular request that we had was the inclusion of the “Align Center” option, so now you can center the icons in your site header or sidebar.

Because we’re now using icon fonts, you can specify the size of your icons, rather than being limited to three sizes as was the case in the previous version of the plugin.

We’ve also added a few more social media services to the plugin, and now the following are available options: Dribble, Email, Facebook, Flickr, Github, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, RSS, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Vimeo and YouTube.

Download the Simple Social Icons plugin and look awesome!

One of those is what’s known as a “sticky menu”, and it’s something that I really wanted to incorporate when I began the redesign process.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at the top of the screen right now. Since you’re reading this, you’ve scrolled down far enough to trigger the sticky menu.

Now scroll back to the top of the page, and you’ll see the sticky menu disappear, giving way to the default header and navigation of my site.

As expected in yesterday’s comments, I was asked how this was implemented. To your surprise, as it was to mine, this is something that is really easy to do.

Adding a Sticky Menu

There’s only a few steps required to create a sticky menu for your site, so go ahead and download the Genesis Sample theme as you’ll need it to follow the steps I mention below. If you are using a StudioPress or custom theme, this will merely serve as guidance.

You’ll need to create a custom menu through the WordPress dashboard, as the sticky menu that is shown at the top of your site will be displaying the secondary navigation.

Moving along, there is 3 sets of code that you need to implement. You can see those at the bottom of this post — functions.php, sticky-menu.js and style.css.

1. functions.php

There are two things you need to add to your theme’s functions file. The first is the function that will enqueue the sticky-menu.js file and the second is the function that will reposition the Secondary Navigation menu at the top of your page.

2. sticky-menu.js

In your theme’s folder, create another folder called js, and then create a new file called sticky-menu.js and place that inside. This file includes the jQuery that will control the fade in/out effect on the sticky menu for your site. Here’s what the path should look like:

genesis-sample/js/sticky-menu.js

3. style.css

Lastly, you’ll see that I’ve provided a bit of CSS that can be applied to your sticky menu to help make it stand out. Feel free to modify or add to this as necessary. To get your menu links to align right, assign them the sticky-right menu class in the CSS Classes option.

So I pulled out my big guns, and got Rafal Tomal involved.

I know, you might be calling that an unfair advantage, but this was one of those times where I really needed his help. And now I’ll go into detail why it was a necessary thing.

It’s Time to Move On

It feels like I’ve spent the better part of the past few years churning out redesigns here on my site. While I really love the process, I also really don’t love the process.

You see, I’m a perfectionist and a refiner.

This means that everything needs to line up and be perfect, but also that I want to keep changing things. I don’t know what you think, but this is a recipe for getting burnt out.

And that’s exactly what I’ve become with my site, and probably why I had to 86 myself a few weeks ago. So instead of becoming the designer, I became the client.

Rafal and I sat down at Starbucks for a few hours, and really went through what it was I wanted to achieve. We talked about my identity and branding, to site layout and beyond.

Being in continual redesign mode isn’t a very efficient use of my time, and I wanted to focus that energy on some other great things we are working on over at Copyblogger.

Welcome to my New Digs

Take your shoes off, and stay a while — mi casa es su casa.

Unlike the previous design I had, my new one has a custom homepage. I really wanted to portray the many sides to who I am, and hopefully we pulled that off in a creative way.

Check out my homepage, and tell me what you think.

Originally I had broken the four sections down to Personal, Lifestyle, Business and WordPress. Something about those didn’t jive with me, and I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to focus on those properly.

So I jumped ship and took things in a direction that is more about what I want this site to be about: me, my writing, my code and my themes.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll probably experience the same resonating feeling about those topics as I did when they finally came to me.

Let’s Take a Tour

Now that I’ve shown you the homepage, I want to walk through the house and point some of the main points of the redesign. And more importantly, why I made the choices I did.

I’ll start at the top of the design, which is the header and navigation. As you can see, I have a very simple logo being used as focal point, with two sets of links to each side.

This worked out perfectly because, as previously mentioned, I wanted to have four main points of entry which lead deeper into the site.

Because the header is relatively tall, I wanted to use an effect called sticky menus to replace it once you scroll down a bit. Not only does this provide more screen real estate, it also gave way to a few things which I’ll discuss below.

The Single Page Design

More than likely you came to this post directly — whether it be via my email newsletter or by way someone link to it on social media. These are two of my biggest traffic sources, with organic search engine traffic being the other.

I’m in the camp, that when people land on a single post, there’s a pretty good chance that you want them to read the content. For me and my site, that’s most definitely the case.

With that said, I’ve chosen to place a featured image at the very top of the content. This was a decision that I insisted on implementing so that it could serve as the focal point.

I wanted to grab my visitors attention, and send them down through the content.

At the bottom of the content, you’ll see a very prominent email newsletter box. That isn’t there by accident, and after reading the content, my hope is that it appealed enough to the reader to make them want to sign up for more.

After that is the typical comments section, which I’ll hope you use to give me feedback or share what your thoughts are on the new design. Hint, hint.

The Lack of a Sidebar

You might be scratching your head on this one, or are thinking you want to privately email me to tell me I forgot to add one.

I’ve chosen not to display a sidebar, and this might have been one of the toughest decisions that I made with the new design.

Like I mentioned above, I really wanted the focus to be on the content. My personal site doesn’t publish breaking news or have a slew of topics on lifestyle like a magazine would.

There are times where I’m really not a fan of sidebars, and with this new design came one of them. My previous sidebar had a picture of me, link to my about page, newsletter signup box and a list of my recent posts.

In my opinion, not only was it distracting from the content, it also duplicated efforts that were in theory being displayed on the single posts and page already.

The Rest of the House

Other things of note with the new layout, is that I’ve kept a search function for those of you trying to find things in particular. In the sticky menu, you’ll see a search icon that you can click and a search form will drop down.

Also note that next to the search icon is a Follow Me menu item, which you can click to find links to my popular social media accounts.

I decided to make use of @2X retina images primarily on the homepage where you’ll see the section icons, but also being used in the header and footer as well.

I’ve also chose to bring back my Stream page, as I love being able to drop simple bits and links to things I find interesting. I consider it my own personal Twitter feed.

What Else is Going On

Now that I’ve finally settled on a design that I plan to keep for a while, I’m sure you guys are wondering what my plans are. Well for starters, the answers to the questions that are burning inside your mind are 1) maybe and 2) yes.

I made the decision with my previous theme design to make it available on Github, and then we released it officially over on StudioPress. I’m pleased to say that Metro is currently (and by a large amount) the most popular selling theme of ours.

With that said, I haven’t decided if (or when) I’ll make this new design available on GitHub, but you can pretty much count on the fact that in some fashion, it’ll make it’s way over StudioPress as a theme you can purchase.

Other really cool things that we have going on at Copyblogger include the upcoming live event in March for real estate agents called AgentPress, the re-welcoming of Brian Clark’s Entreproducer and more from Demian Farnworth on Google Authority.

Last But Not Least

It wouldn’t be a party unless I put on a sparkly top hat and blew $0.99 horns, right?

I’m very pleased to announce that the entire network of Tsh Oxenreider’s Simple Living Media sites are now running Genesis. Her flagship site, Simple Mom, was the first to get onboard, and we moved the rest over as well.

She’s been extremely fun to work with, and we’re looking forward to doing some great things with her network in the upcoming months.

Last, but certainly not least, I’m very happy to announce that early last week, Rae Hoffman (better known as Sugarrae) also launched her site on Genesis. You can read her post on Genesis vs. Thesis, why she made the switch and her Genesis theme review.

Good stuff, eh?

Well Happy Monday to you, and may the odds be ever in your favor …

Normally I make folks sweat it out and wait a few weeks once I unveil a new look, but for whatever reason this time around I changed things up. So this past weekend I spent a number of hours working up a new design for my personal site.

I started with the Modern Portfolio theme that we are releasing today, and ran with it into a direction that I thought I really liked.

Expect the Unexpected

Sometimes in life you need to keep yourself in check. The past couple of themes/designs that I’ve come up with, in my eyes, have been really good. It seems like Metro and Modern Portfolio were well received, so I assumed I could keep the ball rolling.

After about 12 hours of diligently crafting pixels, I launched and activated my new design on Sunday morning. Five minutes later I re-activated the theme you see here on my site and put the new one onto the cutting room floor.

I can’t pinpoint what it was, but something about it didn’t work. Something made me think “this isn’t really awesome or innovative.”

I’ve Lost That Loving Feeling

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not an arrogant person, but I have confidence when it comes to developing new themes on the Genesis Framework.

With that confidence comes opportunity to face failure when things don’t go as planned.

Most freelancers will tell you they are their own worst client, and many make jokes about firing themselves. This weekend was one of those times, where I finally 86ed myself.

Once in a while you need to walk away, before things get worse. For me this was one of those times, as I was too close to the design, and needed some time before I started over.

I’m ok with that, as I do believe in mulligans.

Be Awesome With What You’re Good At

…and not what you aren’t.

I’ve gotten lucky with my last two theme designs, but deep down I can admit that I’m not a brilliant designer. While I can hold my own at times, I’m just not awesome at it.

In today’s world, efficiency and time management are vital for success. This past weekend reminded me I need to let awesome people do things that I’m not awesome at.

I’m an idea guy and like to paint pictures in my head that quite frequently I’m incapable of pulling off. This tells me that I should spend more time on the uncreative side of the creative process, and let those who are awesome at design, well design.

Even though I’ve been knocked down, I know I’ll get back up. I’m like the scrappy little puppy who won’t back down from the fight.

Another design awaits. Let’s just see which one of us wins the battle.

It’s been some time since I focused a blog post on Google Fonts, so I thought it was time to do it one again. A while back I posted what I considered the top 5 Google Font combinations, but today I want to do much better and take things a bit further.

Google places their fonts in four categories — Serif, Sans Serif, Display and Handwriting.

As a guy who loved the Georgia font back in the day, it piqued my interest to see what are the most popular serif fonts according to Google.

Without further adieu, I’d like to show you the top 10 most popular serif Google fonts. The headline for each font is 24px and the paragraph text for each font is 16px. I’ve even gone through the trouble of creating a style sheet for this so you can see what they look like.

Note – If you’re running your site on the Genesis Framework, you’ll be amazed with just how easy it is to load Google Fonts.

Many folks who follow me on Twitter knew it was coming back then, as I cryptically tweeted out the (now) infamous “Oops, I did it again…” thing.

As history has now repeated itself for the third time, Metro joins the eleven40 theme and the Minimum theme as previous designs which made their way onto StudioPress for sale.

About the Redesigning

Because of my ownership in Copyblogger Media, I am afforded the luxury of not giving a rip about building my personal brand. I still do, to some extent, but the bottom line is that I don’t need my personal blog to channel incoming freelance business and the like.

What this does for me, is open up my site here to be a canvas — or what I call, at times, a design playground. This is my easel for things I like to paint.

The fact of the matter is that I produce content here on my site to help people, but the visual side of things is really just a testing ground for potential StudioPress themes.

While I might turn off folks who don’t like the constant change of designs, it gives me a hands on opportunity to create and develop things that are very cool.

The Proof is in the Pudding

Ok, so I mentioned that my two previous designs are now themes that we sell on StudioPress. What I didn’t mention was that eleven40 and Minimum were the #1 and #2 top selling themes for the previous month on StudioPress.

Coinkidink? Eh, not really. And that’s why I did it again with the Metro theme.

If I had to put my money down on black or red (with black being the top 5 selling themes in February), I most certainly would feel comfortable laying down the house on *not* red.

In other words, I’m predicting that Metro will be in the top 5 (if not the #1) theme sales for next month. And yes, come early March I’ll follow up this post with the results.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Ok, so it’s not really a problem per se, but usually when I make a theme available on StudioPress I am already having the undeniable urge to work on the next redesign.

However, this just in…

Heh, this is the first time in a while that I’ve made my personal theme available on StudioPress and DON’T want to redesign mine.

— Brian Gardner (@bgardner) January 29, 2013

This is a good thing, as I have a number of things on my plate to focus on for the next few months. You might be asking what these are, and some of them are Genesis related.

In case you missed a few tweets I dropped last week, the next theme I am working on is called Modern Portfolio. Check out the one-page scrolling effect, ya dig?

I’m obviously not done with the theme, so if it feels unfinished, that’s because it is. Rafal has also developed a couple of themes that are nearing completion as well.

Here’s Where the Story Ends

For those of you who loved coffeehouse rock back in the early ’90s you’ll understand that reference. You Millennials might not, but the song Here’s Where the Story Ends from The Sunday’s Reading, Writing, and_Arithmetic album is easily one of my top 5 favorite songs.

The story, in today’s post, is my explanation of why I redesign my site so often. It’s a conglomeration of having design OCD, my passion for learning new CSS and design techniques and my desire to serve you up the very best and hippest WordPress theme.

So what are your thoughts? Is this a valid explanation?

Discuss below.

And I’m glad that I did.

I began feeling envious of my friends Bill Erickson and Jared Atchison, who constantly flex their dev muscles by posting nicely embedded code snippets on their websites.

I wanted to be like Mike, so I rolled up my sleeves as I often do, and got my hands dirty.

You may have noticed, but I am now using GitHub to power my code snippets, and you can see all of the Gists that I publish. You should bookmark that page. Really.

Using Github as a Mind Dump

To the point, and the primary reason for this post, is that I finally learned how to create repositories on Github. I tried using the command line in terminal, but got TKO’ed quickly.

Thankfully there’s a GitHub for Mac app that’s available, which basically makes it idiot-proof for creating, uploading and maintaining repositories. Something I really needed.

Why am I telling you all of this?

I’ll make it short and sweet and simply give you the 411 on my plans. I’m going to use my Github account to post code and themes that will be freely available to download.

Consider this a mind dump, where I’ll publish things that don’t make it to StudioPress or are a result of late-night Starbucks, iTunes and design inspiration that I think you’ll enjoy.

To be fair, this code will be unsupported, often raw and at times, might not make sense.

Forking my Themes

Cutting to the chase, I’ll be doing this for all of the custom themes I use here on my blog and other places — I’m giving you permission, and even providing the links to…

1. Fork my custom theme that I use on BrianGardner.com
2. Download the free Genesis Sample theme for 1.9

Yes, this is legit. And if you don’t believe me, check out Andrew Barnett’s website.

So for those of you who can read between the lines, you might want to follow me on Github as there’s a pretty good chance you’ll see some more stuff coming.

Nearly 6 months ago I purchased a 15″ Macbook Pro with Retina Display, and after a few days of using it, I returned it to get a brand new 13″ Macbook Air.

At the time, I was madly in love with the Air’s lightweight design, and the portability that it had. To be honest with you, there was no doubt that I’d ever use another machine again.

Here’s some proof of what I was thinking back then:

I’m starting to believe in this: “Once you go Macbook Air, you never want anything else.”

— Brian Gardner (@bgardner) June 22, 2012

It’s pretty funny for me to look back, because at the time I was convinced 100% that this was true. And there many folks who agreed with me on Twitter when I posted that.

The Retina Display

One of the things I was most heavily conflicted about was the pure beauty of the retina display. It was undeniable how much better the screen looked with it, and I tried my best to get over the weight different between the two.

Because I had purchased an iPad 3, I had some experience viewing on the retina display — which made the idea of having a 15″ Macbook Pro with retina more appealing.

However, as you can clearly see, I just couldn’t let go of my Air:

Loving the retina display in the 15″ Macbook Pro. Hating the fact that it’s not, well, a 13″ Air.

— Brian Gardner (@bgardner) June 22, 2012

So I brought back the machine and picked up a new 13″ Macbook Air. Life was back to normal, and I was a pretty happy guy.

Until Apple did the unthinkable.

The 15″ Macbook Pro with Retina Display felt heavy. Much heavier than the 13″ Air did. In the same way a 17″ PC laptop feels like a tank. Which made it much easier to trade in.

The Air Experience

A few weeks after the 13″ Macbook Pro came out with Retina Display I decided to drop by the Apple Store. I should have known better, because bad things happen when I do that.

Anyway, I brought my 13″ Air with me, just to do a side-by-side comparison.

So I walked into the store and went straight to the new Macbook Pro section. I pulled out my Air, and placed it directly next to the 13″ Macbook Pro with Retina Display.

I had to do a double take, because for some reason they looked practically identical. In fact, I think the Macbook Pro is a bit smaller, even though it weighs more.

There were only two things that mattered to me — weight and screen display.

The Macbook Pro vs. Macbook Air

I picked up the 13″ Pro with one hand, and was fairly impressed at how light it was. Then I grabbed the 13″ Air in my other hand, and tried to feel the difference.

The fact of the matter is there is a weight difference between the two. The 13″ Macbook Air weighs 2.96 pounds and the 13″ Macbook Pro weighs 3.57 pounds.

However, with the 15″ Macbook Pro weighing in at 4.46 pounds, the 13″ Pro is much more comparable to the 13″ Air than it is the 15″ Pro.

After feeling a negligible weight difference between the two, I compared the visual displays. All I can say is that it literally took me 3 seconds before I asked the Apple employee to grab me the 13″ Macbook Pro. The difference in display was outrageous.

I knew the iPad 3 looked really good, but in the context of a laptop, and especially next to a non-Retina laptop, this was clearly a TKO. (Technical Knock Out, for non-boxing fans.)

The 13″ Macbook Pro Conclusion

It’s funny how life works. The goal I had when I walked into the Apple store that day was to validate that I didn’t need (nor want) the 13″ Macbook Pro. I wanted to remind myself of the previous experience that I had so that I could put this one to rest as well.

I was blindsided by the fact that the 13″ Macbook Pro felt like a 13″ Macbook Air, with the only difference being the crisp viewing experience of the retina display.

In fact, I consider myself a display snob now. Last week I went to the Apple store to check out the iPad Minis, and forgot that they weren’t retina when I went to buy it.

Before I told the guy to get one, I picked it up and opened up Safari and nearly threw up when I saw how “horrible” the screen looked with it being non-retina.

The Temporary Agreement

Even though I dearly love my 13″ Macbook Pro with Retina Display, we have this agreement between us (yes, me and the machine) that it’s only a temporary thing.

I’m desperately hoping that the unveiling of the “perfect machine” will take place during the next Apple event. Please, please, please let it be so.

I really don’t care if it’s a 13″ or a 15″, but the ultimate prize in my opinion will be an Air with Retina Display. I know for a fact that I’m not the only one holding out here.

And if for some reason it’s not in the cards, the 13″ Macbook Pro is a such a beautiful ride that I’ll be driving it for some time. Maybe even long enough to spin 100,000 miles on it.

Macbook Pro/Air Discussion Time

I’d love to know what you guys think about the 13″ Macbook Pro with Retina Display.

Are you like me and had the 13″ Air and swore you’d never switch from it? Are you also like me and made the switch?

Let’s geek out in the comments, and be Apple fanboys (and girls) by talking about this!