Designing on Shafiq Alibhai

I made a WordPress theme that looks like iOS

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:26:45 +0000

I’ve been staring at my iPhone all day and I got tired of how every WordPress blog looks the same – flat headers, generic sidebars, the whole deal. So I spent the evening building a theme that actually looks like iOS, and I’m putting it up for anyone who wants it.

The whole thing is built around that familiar iOS table view look. Striped background, rounded white cells with the little chevron arrows, a search bar at the top that matches the system aesthetic. It’s not trying to be a 1:1 copy of the iPhone – it’s just borrowing enough of the visual language that people who spend their days in iOS will feel at home.

Black & Blue — a free PSD template

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:47:19 +0000

This is a template I designed for Zap Web Online — a web solutions company that wanted a dark, techy look. The brief was fairly open: make it look fast, modern, and a bit futuristic. Hence the name.

The layout is a fixed-width centre column on a textured metallic background. The header has the Zap Web logo on the left, a four-item navigation bar (Home, About Us, Portfolio, Contact) with blue highlight on the active tab, and a “Chat Live” button tucked into the top right of the banner. The banner itself is a glowing blue waveform against a black gradient with the tagline “Lightning Fast Web Solutions”.

Cover Design for ASTRA College Magazine

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:39:59 +0000

I was asked to put together a cover for ASTRA, the college magazine. The brief was loose enough that I could experiment with typography and layout without worrying too much about brand guidelines or committee sign-off.

The main challenge was making the masthead work at different scales. College magazines tend to be printed cheaply on decent paper, so the design needed to hold up even when the press wasn’t perfect. I kept the palette simple and let the type carry the weight.