30 April 2007
Dark Wordpress Theme by iLemoned.com and Bartelme Design
The “Dark” Theme for Wordpress was released by iLemoned a week ago and the design is based on the design that Bartelme Design had previously used before their upgrade. iLemoned basicly has an arrangement with Wolfgang Bartelme, whereas he can release Wolfgang’s designs as free Wordpress templates, once Wolfgang has decided to recycle and re-design his own site. It can’t be doubted that Wolfgang is a great designer and iLemoned surely brings some valuable Wordpress skills to the team.
This theme, just like the the Fresh Theme by the same duo, will probably become one of the most popular and widely used Wordpress designs out there. Taking a quick glance, you would really not dispute this fact. So here’s a closer look at the theme…
The Good Stuff
The overall design is great and the comments or additional information column to your left, is truly unique and is probably one of the main reasons behind the greatness of this theme. With this column, the design seems to be aligned to the right, which is also quite different from your current Web 2.0 trends, which prefers center-aligned designs. So obviously the uniqueness of the theme plays a massive role here and this is something we’ve got to label as “creative genius”! Although there’s a whole bunch of information packed onto the layout, it doesn’t seem overcrowded and the spacing is good. Overall the design is just very pleasing to the eye and very easy to use.
I had a quick peak at the code and iLemoned can be congratulated on some very neat coding. Any Wordpress designer worth his / her salt should be able to (quite) easily customize this template.
Critiq’ed
My biggest problem with the design is probably the colours - I’m not very fond of it at all. I’m not saying that it’s bad (not by a long shot), but it is not my favourite colour combination. I think that if one considers Web 2.0 design trends and the need for white space, this theme almost makes it look busier than it is, due to the lack of lighter, empty areas.
The second thing is that the layout is effectively a four column design. Now most bloggers wouldn’t mind this, but a two column layout is still preferred by most, even though I can’t see any ambitious blogger not choosing a 3 column layout. But the fourth column, even if it adds to the uniqueness of the theme, might be overkill and might make it seem a bit over the top or too complex for some bloggers (consider this fact while keeping in mind that most people that download and use free Wordpress templates, are purely bloggers and not designers-cum-bloggers).
And lastly, the contrast between the background and text is not good enough. Most people will struggle to read the text easily, although the colours are indeed compatible.
Judgement
There’s no way in hell that negatives will outweigh the positives for this theme - this is a great design and the uniqueness speaks of the creative genius behind it! With a free Wordpress theme, there’ll obviously always be aspects lacking, but this had to be considered with the fact that these designs were created for one blog (Bartelme Design) and then repackaged and distributed to the masses. So a free Wordpress theme will never satisfy everyone’s needs.
But the professionalism of this theme is astounding and I wish more Wordpress themes are this great! I would definitely recommend the use of this theme, but considering the popularity thereof, I would change colours and add a custom header to make your version stand out from the crowd. This is a theme that you’ll see around the blogosphere a lot and you don’t want to look generic, even though this theme is so unique. In a sense the popularity of the theme will counter the uniqueness thereof, but that is truly a minor issue.
My last thoughts are that even if this theme is not well-supported by Wordpress bloggers, it serves as a benchmark for future Wordpress templates, as well as being a huge source of design inspiration!
