iReflect BB Theme
In light of all my recent announcements and changes to the site, I come baring a shiny, new BlackBerry theme as well. To be honest, this theme comes as a bit of a surprise even to me—especially given the fact that I decided long ago to ‘never’ make an OS inspired theme (read: knock-off of an established/published GUI). However, my attitude towards this practice has somewhat changed in recent months due to unforeseeable circumstances, all of which will be discussed in a separate post. Nevertheless, I am proud to present my newest theme, iReflect, an iPhone-inspired BlackBerry theme available in the Shoppe for $5.75.
To clarify, I still don’t condone the practice of completely emulating an established GUI design onto a different platform, as I feel that it exemplifies a lack of originality and creativity. Moreover, I’ve still tried to maintain some semblance of original design with iReflect, regardless of its obvious iOS 4 influences.
For the most part, iReflect is a minimal theme—a theme style that I’ve grown accustom to ever since I released Nox (and Nox Rose) a few months ago. The minimal aspects of this theme, like the small banner and clean icon set, are in homage to the iPhone’s simple, yet graphically rich user interface. But don’t let the otherwise simplistic appearance of iReflect’s Home Screen fool you in to thinking that this theme somehow lacks in functionality. In actuality, this theme includes 3-in-1 functionality on the Home Screen, wherein it has the ability to convert into a Bottom Zen or Calendar Today* or Blank Screen layout with relative ease. Simply press ‘E’ on your keyboard to hide the dock (which includes six user customizable icons), then simply press ‘R’ to reveal the dock again. Meanwhile, the hidden today area has the ability to display up to seven preview entries; simply scroll up from the docked icons to access any available Today content. Also included on the Home Screen are a few coded hotkeys**: ‘F’ will launch Profiles, ‘I’ will launch Pictures and ‘$’ will launch your SMS/MMS inbox. I opted to exclude a hotkey for QuickLaunch, seeing as the most recent updates for this [great] utility application features the ability to set the app to launch with any available keyboard shortcut of your choosing.
In an effort to continue my tradition of providing wallpaper friendly themes here at Artistic Me, I’ve chosen a versatile color palette of black, silver and cobalt blue for iReflect. Likewise, the Lock Screen for this theme includes my customary ‘screen dimming’ feature, which allows your User Info to appear more legibly over your preset wallpaper. The background image featured in the Home Screen is one of my own seascape photographs, taken whilst on a geology field trip in Laguna Beach. The overall moody and mysterious atmosphere exuded in this photo correlates with the ‘reflective’ elements found within the Home Screen layout, all of which attributed to the naming of this theme: iReflect. Additionally, some notable iPhone-inspired elements featured in iReflect include the fully skinned Active and Incoming Call Screens, the black-on-silver icon set, ‘zooming’ screen transitions and Helvetica Neue type face used throughout. (However, the message lists fonts are user customizable, per usual.)
*The ‘Calendar Today’ layout refers to the ability to have only your calendar entries visible on the Home Screen. Simply scroll to the Calendar icon while on the Home Screen to bring up the hidden today content (read: upcoming calendar events), and then hide the dock/icons by pressing ‘E’ on your keyboard. (You must have the Calendar icon arranged on the dock for this layout option to work.)
**In order for the hidden dock and hotkey features to work accordingly, you must disable the ‘Dial from Home Screen’ option within your Phone settings.
Notice: I do not distribute the original wallpapers featured in my themes. I design and/or incorporate these wallpapers specifically for their designated theme only. As such, these wallpapers are only available within the themes themselves; they are not available separately and/or à la carte. Sorry.
