Well, it’s not really surprising. A BBH* wins the Sandbox Design Competition. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great looking theme, but it looks so much like so many others it’s no different to any of them. Personally, I think Prima is the best looking theme. Ok, I’m not a beige kinda guy so the colours might change a little but it’s not blue and, from the screenshot, it looks to be well laid out too.
Andy also mentions that Sandox will be upgraded for wordpress.com “very soon”.
*Big Blue Header. Ask That Girl Again.
8 Comments
hahaha, i was expecting this to be TGA’s post title ;)
you’re right, it’s not surprising, really.
I think she must be sleeping or something. :o)
Not sleeping, just trying really, really hard to only say nice things.
Generally this results in saying nothing.
Once the fellow slated to at least dent the BBH, I seem to have but fed it. Heh. :P
Man, that sandpress theme is so obviously just a rip-off of the iPhone internal CSS style or whatever you want to call it. I mean, the read-more graphic is pure “slide-on”. If anything the winner of this competition was “kubrick + iPhone”.
@jeremy -
the “read more” also bears similarity to the google checkout button. i don’t think either graphic concept can claim genuine originality, and arpit’s graphics are clearly his own making. influence != rip-off.
also, the colors are more similar to the wordpress.com ribbon than to kubrick. it is intented to look very wordpress-ish, which is probably the reason it had such wide appeal.
i get very annoyed with people who cry rip-off at the slightest sign of similarity. it’s very disingenuous to the process of design.
I didn’t mean to say that it wasn’t a legitimate theme because it so clearly revels in it’s similarity to iPhone, it is a legitimate theme and poaching from apple’s design sense is a compliment to Apple more than anything.
What I was saying is that the fact that it won the CONTEST is likely because of iPhone hype and the fact that people are particularly receptive to that exact style right now. So inferences you can make from that are things like “maybe no one else could have one, because this guy had the hook on all the mac/wordpress fans” (and is it just me or is there some serious crossover there?), or that maybe, 6 months ago, it wouldn’t have fared as well as it did just now.
For the record, I like the iPhone one better than the one Colin liked ;)
my issue is with your syntax. “rip-off” has specific connotations. you cannot say rip-off, and then say you’re not taking issue with its legitimacy. that is _exactly_ what rip-off means.
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