r3fresh

PatternWall.com: Free Patterns for Your Twitter

The default Twitter themes are boring. Some might say Twitter is boring, but that’s completely besides the point. Finding a great background to separate yourself from the thousands of others hasn’t always been easy, until I found PatternWall.

There are countless sites around interwebs that are offering customized Twitter themes, but most of them are more worried about promoting themselves on every theme used. PatternWall.com is a Tumblr-based site that displays about 100 different tile-able patterns that can be used on any Twitter account and/or any other projects you see fit. The best part is there is no sign-up and you just click, download, and you’re done.

There are a number of styles of patterns including plaid, grunge, shapes, and stripes. I really wish the patterns were in a higher resolution. Some of them are very blurry and even unusable, but I can only expect that to change with time. This is a new site and I’m interested to see if they’ll add more patterns periodically and/or how they will fix the quality issues plaguing the site currently.

PatternWall.com

You can check out my new Twitter theme here.

Do you have a gnarly Twitter theme? Link it in the comments

Tags: themes, twitter

Eyesore Craigslist

Just over the past weekend I have visited Craigslist every hour. Why? Keeping a close eye on newly posted cars. Now that I have found the perfect car, I’m questioning the design of Craigslist. I know the creators were going for simple, quick design, but I think Craigslist needs some minor tweaks to keep its user’s eyes from bleeding.

I think the biggest problem is how easy it is to skip over something. If they were to add better divisions between each posting I wouldn’t have to do double triple takes to make sure I’m seeing everything.

Craigslist can keep it simple, but tweak the design and space the whole thing out. Maybe change the colors to something more modern. While I was writing this I found this great Smashing Magazine article about redesigning Craigslist. I don’t think I would go that much into changing the site, but I do agree on many of the ideas they bring up.

Would you change Craigslist?

Tags: classifieds, craigslist, simple

Light Bulb Side Table

In my Design 122 class we were required to pick one everyday object and create something functional out of it. I decided to choose the most fragile of objects, a light bulb. The table, which would go great next to a couch, is about 22″ tall and made only of light bulbs (about 60) and hot glue.

Surprisingly, the way I glued them together created an extremely sturdy structure. I still wouldn’t use this if I had a dog or were clumsy, but I like how it turned out. Wasn’t able to afford a piece of tempered glass to go on top, yeah I’m a college student.

What do you think?

Tags: furniture, light bulb, school