So I thought about it for a while and I was growing tired of the look of the site. The theme was based on an Upstart Blogger theme that is great, but I was in a rush and it really didn’t come out looking how I envisioned it. So once I decided that it needed to change my initial thought was to create a whole new theme from scratch using Sandbox. I designed the theme is Photoshop and started to implement it into the Sandbox platform but I ran into the same problems as I did on my last theme quest. After some frustrating hours, I came to the conclusion that it would take too long for me to create a theme from scratch, I just don’t have that kind of patience. So I ended that and began focusing on finding a theme that was very simple, easy to customize and was built on some kind of grid system. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.
After some searching I finally found Marber by Apt Studio. It’s based on Romek Marber’s 1961 grid for Penguin Books, which is a huge plus, and when I looked at the CSS it was all clean and easy to understand. In no time I was on my way to creating a theme that I think represents my style as well as the content of this blog. I wanted a simple, clean design that payed homage to the modernist era and I think I accomplished. What ya think?
I’m going to be tweaking it in the next few days so pardon me if the site is down for quick changes. I haven’t tested how it looks on a PC so if those of you who do use a PC could give me some feedback that would be great.
I want to thank the folks at Apt Studio for creating such a wonderful theme. It might not be a theme with the most “eye candy” but it sure has a lot of underlining meaning to the form and structure that makes it so valuable. You can read a bit of the background to the theme here.
Here are some features:
- A simple, two-column theme.
- Six colour schemes, easily changed via the backend.
- Three layouts, for 800px width, 1000px width, and fully fluid, again easily switched via the admin panel.
- Widgetized sidebar.
- WP 2.3+ only – includes tags.
- Typographically set to a baseline grid.
- Author comment highlighting.
- Cross-browser compatible, with subtly different layouts for Mozilla, Webkit and IE browsers.
- Integrated microformats.
- Fully valid XHTML and CSS.
- Integrated WordPress.com stats (with no smiley!).
- Custom 404 page.
It’s nice, i really like the background color! The only strange thing i see i the “logo”, i think it would look better on the top left (same line that search).
Thanks. I actually really like where the logo is positioned. I also don’t want to mess too much with the original structure.
Good layout.. but for me its too much contrast. Before there was a lot of focus on each post.
Nice and clean. Reminds me of Khoi Vinh’s site http://www.subtraction.com/
I want to start up a blog that i can change the layout and stuff, wheres best to start? is WordPress good to use?
Cheers
O.
WordPress is a pretty good choice. Check out Sandbox, it’s a stripped down theme perfect for a starting point.