The whole trick hinges on the fact that browsers render CSS borders using angles. That is, the borders of adjacent sides join each other at an angle, like a miter joint. Jon shows how to use this quirk of CSS to draw triangles, and other multicolored shapes.

Here’s my thought:

it seems like this technique could be exploited to create pure CSS logos, which would seriously increase loading speed over image file logos. You could even create hover states, I think.

Any CSS wizards out there willing to try a few, and report back?

I’m into details, and my wife is REALLY into details. I think they’re important, she actually can notice them. It works well, since she’s the graphic design half of our enterprise here.

Branding consistency is really about a mindset which says, “NO! We are not using that font for this presentation. Our body-text font is X.” You have to understand that one shade of blue is not the same as another shade of blue. My wife and I have moved an apostrophe we thought was too high, and even once shrunk a single letter of a font (U) because it was slightly fatter than it should have been.

Related to consistency is a personal branding strategy I use…

The Social Bootstrap brand is color and texture rich. Our logo has seven different colors (plus black), all of which have a gradient, and are then placed over a concrete background. I do my best to reflect this color-rich idea in my clothing.

I don’t want to go overboard and wear the seven colors of my logo (that would not be subtle), I do try to (tastefully) wear as many different colors and textures as I can. This is easiest in the fall and winter (more articles of clothing to wear).
For example, I recently wore:

• navy blue pants
• orange dress shirt shirt
• olive green sweater vest
• light khaki suit jacket
• dark khaki socks
• reddish-brown leather shoes and belt
• scarf in several shades of brown and khaki

This is pretty typical of my clothing. While none of those colors is exactly a Social Bootstrap color, the richness of having more colors than most people wear contributes to the personal brand identity I am building. The colors come together in a way that doesn’t stick out or look outrageous, but is different enough to give people a sense of what kind of person I am, and what kind of company I run.

What do you think?
What branding strategies do you use? How do you feel about consistency?
Do you consider your clothing a part of your personal brand?

This post is part of the Brogan 100.
Learn more here and here.

Atahualpa is a powerful, customizable, SEO-optimized Word Press theme with excellent user support.

Thesis is a powerful, customizable, SEO-optimized Word Press theme with excellent user support.

Atahualpa is free.

Thesis is not free.

Hmm… Easy decision?

Well, no.

As you might suspect, Thesis really is a better theme. If the amount of “better” is worth the price ($87 for an individual; $164 for a developers license), then you should go with Thesis. If not, Atahualpa is the way to go.

So what does Thesis do that Atahualpa doesn’t?
Among other things:

-“Web 2.0” look and feel.
You can trick out Atahualpa pretty well if you have a mind to and have some patience with CSS, but Thesis was clearly developed by a good designer, not just a good programmer. Thesis sites tend to come out looking a little more contemporary, rich, and dynamic. Without a lot of thought and work (and design sense on your part), Atahualpa sites can come out looking a little “static.”

-Typography
The internet is the bane of all people who care about the way text looks. From available fonts to justification issues to imperfect kerning, browsers just aren’t smart enough to make things look like they should. Other than standard CSS, Atahualpa doesn’t give you any help with typography. Thesis has some great built-in tools to make Typography work better (it’s actually one of their selling points).

-Tutorials and Support
Atahualpa has a fantastic support forum. Almost everything I’ve ever had trouble with, I’ve been able to find out about on the Atahualpa Support Forum. But Thesis goes even further- support, tutorials, videos, guides. And a lot of third party material.
The developers of Thesis were smart enough to create an affiliate selling program, which means that other bloggers and web masters have an economic incentive to get people to use Thesis. That also gives them an incentive to create helpful guides and tutorials.
Without a similar incentive, there isn’t nearly as much third-party help with Atahualpa.

-SEO
Atahualpa is good at Search Engine Optimization, and plays well with SEO plugins like All-In-One or Platinum. The developer of Atahualpa “lived off SEO for several years” (whatever that means). But Thesis creates cleaner, better optimized HTML, which the Google spiders like just a little more. If you’re looking for an SEO edge, Thesis is the way to go.

-Load Time
Because of it’s cleaner code (another Thesis selling point), Thesis pages tend to load a little faster than Atahualpa pages.

-Hackiness
Hackiness is fixing your above-ground swimming pool with duct-tape and a blue tarp. Elegance is an in-ground swimming pool with a screened enclosure.
Both “get the job done” (providing a place for neighborhood children to splash around and pee), but one is much more relaxing, inviting, and attractive.
Atahualpa is like a decent above-ground swimming pool (no blue tarp). It works well, it gets the job done, it seldom floods my yard. But it is a little hacky. Just a little. And tricking it out with a specific visual style and functionality can end up being very hacky. Duct-tape and chewing gum hacky, in some cases.
Thesis is less hacky, more elegant; less blue tarp, more in-ground.

There are other issues as well, and the hard-core Thesis people all have their particular favorite thing that Thesis does.

Overall, the ROI on the Thesis price seems excellent- and if you have any capital at all, I’d recommend going with the Thesis Theme for a business. But if you’re broke, or a hobbyist, Atahualpa will serve very well with no or very few problems.

So which do I use?

As much as I love Thesis, this site runs on Atahualpa, for two reasons:
-This site was designed before Thesis was available. When Thesis became available, I didn’t really want to take the time to redo the layout and visual design.
-Moreover, the use of Atahualpa is a great Bootstrapping example. Social Bootstrap is all about stretching and leveraging of resources. I like to point out what is possible for businesses to accomplish with no or little capital. For some micro-startups or muse projects, even $87 might be too much. For them, I keep using the Atahualpa theme.

If you have additional thoughts about Thesis or Atahualpa, especially technical specifics, website examples, success stories, or tragic episodes- please share them in the comments.

I’m in the process of adding service menus to the Social Bootstrap website, so that people can look and see what it is we sell and how much it would cost to hire us. Over on the left hand sidebar of each menu page, I wrote a short, compelling (in my opinion) description of that page’s services area (Web, Print Books, Seminars, etc.). The left sidebar column, though, is a little small, so sometimes lines break in places that look a little unattractive. Here is a screen shot of the “Book Services” sidebar from earlier this morning, right after I wrote the copy:

Notice the line breaks after the words “meant,” and “book,” on the sixth and seventh line. This happens because “convincing” and “publishers” are both too long.

Also, the line break at “self-publishing,” is rather unfortunate.

So- what to do, what to do?

I could try to rewrite the line around, “that meant convincing book publishers,” but there’s got to be a better way. I briefly consider widening the column. I mean, really- I’m going to keep having problems like this with a sidebar so skinny. But, alas- the column is the width that it is because we want it to line up with the “buckle” of the Social Bootstrap logo, and we like the size of the logo.

So then I notice the break between the third and fourth lines:
as an expert than to
literally have “written the

Surely the word “have” could fit on the previous line, if I rewrote to:
as an expert than to have
literally “written the

Natually, that change would adjust that line, and it would affect all the subsequent lines.

So, after making sure I got a screen capture for comparitive “before-and-after” pictures, I switched two words in the copy.

Here’s the result:

Notice that removing “have” from the fourth line made enough room for the word “book.” That pulled everything back, leaving enough room for “convincing” and “publishers” before the line break. The changes cascade down the column, eventually bringing “self-” closer to the end of the line, which is much more attractive and readable.

Much better.

Of course, I’m not quite done. I also notice that without full line breaks between paragraphs, the whole column looks a little crowded and hard to read. To see the result of that, and of any other changes I make, you’ll have to actually look at the Book Services page.

So- Why bother?

Well, mostly it’s about taking pride in your own work. There are a lot of cheesy, poorly designed, hackified websites out there in the world. I don’t want that for my site. It’s possible that the change may even increase my conversion rate (who knows?). But not everything about design should be about conversion rate.

My wife and I were recently at a very nice Taco Bell (well designed, clean, interesting) and I was wondering about ROI (return on investment). That is- does having a nicer Taco Bell dining room attact enough additional sales to be worth the expense of design and renovation. We thought maybe it would, but we also said that we would probably have spent the money even if it didn’t, because that’s the kind of business we like to run.

Perhaps some of you are ROI junkies. Don’t spend an extra moment or an extra nickel on something unless it returns measurable increase in profits. If that’s you, you probably can’t imagine why someone would spend a half-hour on Monday morning smooshing words back and forth on a sidebar column.

But I’m not in business primarily to get a high ROI. Yes, yes- it’s important. I do have bills to pay. But I started Social Bootstrap so that I could build the kind of business I’ve always wanted to be a part of- a business that cares about things like details and quality and text-layout.

And though I’ll never be able to prove that the ROI for a half-hour of text-editing made it a profitable use of my time, I believe it is one more thing a potential customer may notice, one more detail that says, “Yes, we believe in quality and we believe in service, and we believe in details.”