Saturday, July 27, 2013

LumenUI


for a full size preview click here

Quick update: I forgot to mention that the under Nova Settings, the icon size is 130%

This theme is similar in function to my GreenScreen theme. It relies on Desktop Visualizer to switch between multiple wallpapers set up to hold different things. Let’s get started

Resources:

Nova Launcher:

  • grid size is 10x6
  • 4 pages
Similar to Greenscreen, This one requires a lot of Nova actions. Place the “jump to page” and app drawer actions and change the Icons.

MultiPicture Live Wallpaper:

set screens to the wallpapers included in the zip folder.

UCCW:

The UZIPs are included in the ZIP folder. All you have to do is drop them in.
  • Time - 1x2 (every page)
  • Date – 1x3 (every page)
  • Weather – 3x1

Simple Calendar:

The simple Calendar Widget looks like this from the get go, so all you have to do is drop and resize.

Ubermusic:

Place 4x3 widget and resize it to 5x4

Simple RSS:

My settings for this widget are as follows:
·        Hide everything but News Title and News Text
·        News Text color is white
·        News Title color is #34df85



Friday, July 19, 2013

Day and Night: Say Goodbye to Squinting

for a full size preview click here

This tutorial is going to be fairly brief. There's just a few elements at work here and they are pretty straight-forward.This theme came out of necessity. I made the day version for something I could see in the bright sunlight and then the first night I hand it I blinded myself while laying in bed, so I made an identical screen that was easy on the eyes after they have adjusted to the dark.

Resources:

Nova Launcher
MultiPicture Live Wallpaper
UCCW
SiMi Folder
ZIP folder

Nova Launcher:

  • grid size is 8x3
  • 2 pages
  • go ahead and place your "Jump to page 1 and 2" Nova Action and change to pictures included in ZIP folder

MultiPicture Live Wallpaper:

set first and second screens to the included wallpapers.

UCCW:

The UZIPs are included in the ZIP folder. All you have to do is drop them in.
  • Time - 3x3
  • Notifications - 3x1 (don't forget to put your own gmail account in)
  • Weather - 3x2 (again, I don't know if the weather icons are packaged with the UZIP but if they aren't, they're found here)

SiMi folder:

I've covered this App in a previous post but I'll go over it again.

First thing is first, you have to set up your App Folders. Since you can't change the widgets outside of the app, you have to create two of each folder with different icons and launcher styles. Once you open the app, it should be simple enough to understand. Pretty much all of the settings are up to you except for a couple of things under "Widget Settings".
  • Under Icon, select the correct Folder label from the resources folder
  • Under Widget Layout, select the left column 4th down (no label, no background, not distorted)
You don't have to but I changed the way it looks when it's open to make it match the theme. Under Launcher settings, change the style to custom and change the colors of the background, frame, and arrow
Red color: 
  • Red 241
  • Green 36
  • Blue 36
  • Alpha 255
Gray color:
  • Red 65
  • Green 65
  • Blue 65
  • Alpha 255
Now you can place your 1x1 SiMi Folder widgets. If you don't want to use the folders I did, I've included a bunch of options as well as a PSD to make your own. If you need to make your own, you'll need the Klinic Slab font from The Lost Type Co-Op.

If you're thinking that it'd be less of a hassle to just create folders by dropping icons onto each other, you'd be correct but this theme's grid creates short fat boxes. Nova Launcher wants you to use a square icon which doesn't fill up the space very well. If you don't mind tiny folder labels, you can certainly try this option.

That's about it. It's a very simple but functional theme.

Monday, July 15, 2013

Just My Type: Vintage Cards for UCCW

you definitely need to check this on up close... click here

Okay, so this is a theme That I've wanted to do for a while now. Since Google Now came out, I've seen a lot of card themes and most have been more of the same: flat white cards with grey Roboto text. This is a vintage take on that idea. I've also wanted to do something that shows off all of the great typefaces from the Lost Type Co-Op. All of these fonts are pay what you want and 100% of the money you spend goes directly to the designer so throw them a couple of bucks if you can.

With this theme I also tried to do something new by using Lightning Launcher. I originally wanted one long vertically scrolling home screen but when I started playing around with Lightning I found myself getting frustrated. Among other things, my icon pack isn't compatible with Lightning so I decided to scrap the idea and just use Nova again. My next big project is a major update of my icon packs supporting this launcher and others as well as a major rewrite of the code. So, until that gets done, I'm going to put Lightning launcher themes on the back burner. I do think there is a lot of potential with the software so I definitely do want to revisit it and try again.

Before you get started, I'm not 100% sure if UZIPs package weather icons, so you may need to see this post for the weather icons download. Even if it does, the download has 4 variations you might be interested in.

Resources:

Nova Launcher
UCCW
Simple RSS Widget
Clear Widget UberMusic Skin
Power Toggles
Shapely White Icons
Resources ZIP file 

Fonts Used:

Time: Dude (Tammy)
Day: Mission Script
Texts and calls: Lavandaria
Numbers: Abraham Lincoln
Weather Text: Deming EP
Weather Numbers: Abraham Lincoln
Social: Governor
Gmail: Cubano
Google: Ranger
Browser: Tommaso
Photo: Klinic Slab (Bold Italic)
Music: Deming EP
Now Playing: Oil Can
News: Pigeon
Tools: Valencia (Black Oblique)

Color Palette Hexcodes:

Red: #8c2318
Yellow: #f2c45a
Yellowish Green: #bfb35a
Blueish Green: #5ec6a
Greenish Green: #88a65e
Whiteish: #dadada
Blackish: #
252525

PSDs:

If you want to make your own cards, I've included a PSD with blank cards. It contains one of each shape in every color. make the card you need, add the texture to the top, trim off the textures edges and save it as a PNG.

Nova Launcher:

Set the following:
  • Wallpaper to something Dark (I just zoomed into this black, speckled area of a wallpaper I already had)
  • Desktop Grid: 9x16
  • Icons: Shapely White
  • Icon Size: 85%
  • Screens: However many you need, 2 cards fit on a page.

UCCW:

The cards serve a few purposes:
  1. Display information (Time, Phone, and Weather Cards)
  2. Open apps (Browser and Gmail cards)
  3. Hold widgets (News, Tools, and Now Playing cards)
  4. Hold icons (Social, Google, Music, Photo, and Tools cards)
Once you've placed and resized your widgets, layer other widgets and icons on top and you're done!

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Shapely Weather Icons for UCCW


Well, it's been nearly a week since I've posted a theme and it's because the one I'm working on now uses a lot of resources that I've had to create from the ground up. One of those resources was a set of weather icons for UCCW. I created a set with my last theme but felt it needed some fine tuning. I like the shapes but the bright white and pitch black didn't fit in with the theme I've been working on. Since I had to create a set anyways, I figured I would clean up the ones I've already made.

Within the zip folder, you'll find 4 variations of the icons. Pure white, pure black, a bright colorful version, and a more muted version with a little texture to it. The muted icon pack is the one that goes with the retro theme that will be posted in the next day or two (I've got to get everything packed up for you guys).

Download the ZIP and place the folders in "Phone>UltimateCustomClockWidget>weather"

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Pullin' Out: Clean, Functional UCCW Sidebars

for a full size preview click here

Okay, since some people found something dirty with my last theme's name, "Tucked Away", I figured I'd name this one something that couldn't possibly be misinterpreted.

This isn't really a theme like the others. I don't usually get a chance to use full screen wallpapers because I'm always completely redesigning my phone's UI. This was a good way for me to incorporate all of the things I need on my phone and still be able to show off my wallpaper.This really only uses UCCW and a couple of Nova Actions so this tutorial is mainly how to tweak it for your own needs.

Resources:

Nova Launcher
UCCW
ZIP File
Photoshop or other image editing software (if you want to change the shortcuts)

Editing the PSDs:

First thing is first, you'll need to tweak the sidebars to show the apps that you use most. You can see I've got my Google Apps on the left and Music, Photo, and Social on the right. In the PSDs, all of the layers are seperated so that you can easily change the headings, icons, and app titles. You can even change the length of the dividing lines in case your headings are a different length than mine. Everything falls on the gridlines so make sure you snap to them.

The font you'll need for editing the PSDs are all in the Roboto family, and the icons are based off of my Shapely White Icons. If you want you can change the icons to something else or delete them completely and just drop you own icons on top of the sidebar.

You may have already noticed that there is no phone or messaging icon. Don't worry about wasting room on these. The notifications provide hotspots for phone, messaging and gmail. The clock at the top provides hotspots for the clock and calendar.
After you have everything looking good, save it as a PNG.

Move files to your Phone:


  • The sidebar PNGs, wallpaper, and arrow icon PNGs can go anywhere on your phone
  • The UZIPs must be on your phone's internal storage. I suggest in the folder 'uccwOutput'
  • the weather icon folders go in 'Phone>UltimateCustomClockWidget>weather'

Setting up the Widgets:

If you haven't made any adjustments, you can skip this step. IF you have made changes and created a new PNG, you'll have to make some changes to the UZIPs. Open them up in UCCW and change image 1 to your new PNG. Now you'll have to adjust your hotspots. on the right, you've got 12 hotspots, one for each app going down the line. Pretty simple. The left side's hotspots are:

  1. Clock*
  2. Calendar*
  3. Phone*
  4. messaging*
  5. gmail
  6. google now (on google heading)
  7. chrome
  8. drive
  9. maps
  10. youtube

*you may also want to double check these to make sure your phone's stock apps use the same activity name.

Placing everything:


  • Set Nova Launcher to 9x16 grid, no margins
  • Place UCCW widgets and resize to 6x16 on left and right screens
  • Place 'jump to page x' Nova actions and change icons to the arrows
  • Change animation to none so the sidebars "slide" out

A few final notes:


  1. If you want white sidebars, open the PSDs and on each layer hit ctrl+i to invert the colors. The arrows and weather icons come in black and white.
  2. While I like the weather icons I've made, I'm going to redo them and tighten things up a bit. When I do update them, I'll create a seperate post for them with a new download, so be checking back.
  3. There isn't suppossed to be a gap between the sidebar and the edge of the screen but I figured it wasn't too distracting so I'd let it slide. If you know of a fix, feel free to leave it in the comments below.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Tucked Away: Clean, Simple, Organized


for a full size preview click here

This is a simple theme that mainly consists of 4 organizational wallpapers, the colors are based on the note colors of Google Keep.

Resources:


Now let's put it together...

Multipicture Live Wallpaper:

As in past themes, we’re going to set up our MultiPicture Live Wallpaper to display a different image for each homescreen. The PNGs included in the Resource folder are the ones I used. I’ve also include the PSDs if you want to make changes to the section headings for what you use most.

After you’ve set your walls you can change your transitions that you prefer. The crossfade transition looks nice going between the homescreens, unfortunately Nova Launcher doesn’t have this option so I usually set them both to something that matches.

Nova Launcher:

As far as your launcher goes, the wallpapers allow for you to choose what grid size you need for your icons and widgets. The grid size I’m using is 5x8. If you want something like two widgets side by side the same width, you can use an even number of columns. I would still recommend using 8 rows though.

As always no margins, status bar, or dock.

Like the GreenScreen theme, we’re also going to place some page jumps. On each arrow, place the Nova Action for Jump to page x. Long press to edit the icon and change it to the included blank png.

All the Rest:

Again, this is totally up to you. The widget’s I’m using are UCCW on the home page (UZIP included), Simple RSS Widget on the news page, Clear Widget Ubermusic Skin on the media page, and Tubular icons throughout.


For widgets that allow you to adjust the text color, the hexcodes are #ffffff for light fonts and #252525 for dark ones. All of the hexcodes for the Keep note colors are also included in the ZIP file.