Bokeh and Blurry Backgrounds

I first saw this style from this popular Tumblr theme. Bokeh is an effect where a colorful palette of round reflections are so washed and blurred from an out of focus lens of some sort. This mystique of photography somehow brings the subject (the content in our case) a much more focused and sharper look. The Bokeh effect gives the entire page an overall feeling of harmony and beauty.

Blur

Bokeh in combination with transparencies as well as rounded corners give this template a thumbs up from me!

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Modern Business 3

This template uses bokeh in the inner frames of the page. Very sleek, professional and elegant.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Dark ‘n Clean

Another Bokeh Beauty, don’t miss the amazing typography from this theme!

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Overlapping Folds

This style has been around for a while, but still doesn’t fail to amaze me. It is when the designer takes page elements and wraps them among sections of the page, as if it was three dimensional.

Unite

Definitely one of my favorites. Exceptionaly detailed – the folds even change in orientation when scrolling up and down

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Stage

This one is very unorthodox. Folds, peels – 3d everywhere!

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Fancy Folio

More in the safe and conservative style, checkout the folded navigation button

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Wild Slideshow Transitions

May it be Flash or Javascript – I’ve noticed a trend in transitions. The “fade” and the “sweep” no longer suffice, check out the slideshows in the templates below for a better demonstration.

Perception

Sliced, reversed, waves – the slideshow on Perception will leave you breathless.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

CleanCut

The transition effects on CleanCut will give your images that “Wow” factor.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Infinite xHTML/CSS Theme

The slideshow on this template is a combination of many styles, played in random order. Tastefully done.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Accordions

Instead of the regular slideshow, some templates integrate an Accordion effect (or both) right in the home page. Both are somewhat similar, though the Accordion is a new trend that gives your website that out of the ordinary style.

Innovation + Science

Definitely of of my favorites – Innovation + Science is very sleek, sharp and clean. The accordion is a good choice for this template.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Newscast

Again, one of my favorites – this template’s got it all: typography, spacing, color, javascript effects – and of course the accordion. Probably the best magazine styled theme I’ve ever seen.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Echoes

Awesome, awesome, awesome!!! This template simply echoes “awesome!”

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Minimalist

Just as the title describes, minimalist styled websites try to achieve the best look out of the least styling. The aim of the minimalist is to present beauty out of pure simplicity.

Europa

Big solid fonts, grayscale schema, massive spacing – this template speaks simple yet beauty.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Squared3

Squared3 has good typography, as well as excellent color scheme.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Minimalistic Studio

This template should also have been in the “Wild Slideshow Transitions” category, again – a nice solid template with simple accents and design applications yet effective results.

You can view the Item here, or Demo from Here

Conclusion

There you have it, a collection of tasty design trends in themeforest templates. What did you think of them? Would you buy any of these templates? Did you at least get inspired to build something as beautiful? Do you notice any other trends in Themeforest or elsewhere that is worth mentioning? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section:

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So much for a name change. Nonetheless, Aparatus is packed with features and design delight that aims to tickle your innermost web mag fancy. I have included extensive theme options that will leave you not needing to touch a single line of HTML. I have cufonized fonts for the headings and the site logos – that you need not create your own. I have modified the WordPress loop so much that it covered almost all possible looping scenario. Last of all, Aparatus comes with four different stylesheets targeted to suit your color schema.

Updated Twitter Badges!

I received enough comments on the Twitter badge to say “Follow ON Twitter” as supposed to “Follow IN Twitter“. So here they are:

• Maroon Badge
• Blue Badge
• Green Badge
• Black Badge

Simply replace the existing badge image in the Theme’s images folder.

The Slide Show

As for many magazine styled websites – a slideshow is a must have. Thanks to JonDesign’s Smooth Gallery – which made this possible. The slideshow by default pulls your five latest posts. The loop then continues to present the remaining of your posts directly below. The theme options allow total exclusion of the slideshow, as well as automatic slide. You can also specify a specific category to be pulled into the slideshow – without ever duplicating the posts in the bottom. All while the default loop logic is still acknowledged and functional. What this means is that – the loop still recognizes the options you enter in WordPress admin – not just in the theme (i.e. number of posts to show, etc); in addition, the paging system (next page etc) still works and automatically hides the slideshow in the inner pages. Oh, I also re-styled the WP-Navi Plugin (the right way), by de registering it’s default stylesheet.

WP 2.9 Thumbnail Ready!

The images in the slideshow as well as the thumbnails per post can be set by using the new “set as thumbnail” feature in WP 2.9!. This supersedes the old school way of inserting “custom-fields” – but will still work with either! You can use the thumbnail feature or custom fields set to “image”.

Ads, Twitter, Widgets and Everything else

The sidebar comes with advertising blocks which you can set up in the theme options panel. When you enter your Twitter account in the options, this will dictate the @replies in the Tweet Me buttons, the big “Follow my Updates” in the header, as well as the last tweet in the sidebar. The popular posts and recent comments tabbed area are all non-plugin driven – which means the code is all inclusive with the theme, without needing to install a plugin. Lastly, the sidebar supports widgets, the comments are threaded, gravatar – ready, as well as suckerfished drop down menus for the categories in the header.

That’s Enough! Download Already!

To view a live preview of Aparatus – click here. You can download the theme from this link. If you like the theme – you can do one of many things to keep me happy: Follow me in Twitter, Donate some coffee money, Tweet about it, subscribe to my feeds or even just leave a nice comment below.

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A number of leading designers have already dominated this WordPress premium themes market; quite notably: Woothemes, DIYThemes and StudioPress.

But amongst these big names you may have come across a more succinct, straightforward and classy premium theme designer – simply named “Elegant Themes“.

Who is Elegant Themes?

Elegant Themes is owned by a designer named Nick Roach. This means that all of the designs and code that is produced from Elegant Themes is from this mighty fellow. According to Nick:

I created this website to provide WordPress themes of quality and integrity. I craft my themes with a goal of simplicity and professionalism and strive to inject each design with a dose of modest elegance. I believe that your website is not just a tool, it is an integral part of your identity. My job is to respect each customer by providing attractive and userfriendly templates that will help you achieve your online goals.

What’s so special about Elegant Themes?

Quality over quantity. Elegant Themes is hardly a large collection – I mean, there’s only about 30 downloadable themes at the time of this writing. But note they are quite high quality. Check out some of them below:

Wooden

Very down to earth, classy and professionally done – this theme can transform your blog into a modern website wonder.

Lumin

Soothing to the eye with subtle textures and sharp, detailed accents – this theme is packed with visual amenities that scream WEB 2.0!

GrungeMag

Semi-magazine, semi-newspaper – beautiful textures, slider, thumbnails – simply stunning.

Evid

Create your own “Hulu” styled video website with this theme:

Deviant

The ultimate grunge look! Random page tears, crumpled paper, dirty textures – you want your blog to stand out from the crowd – this be the theme for you!

Like Nick said – “each design is injected with a dose of modest elegance”. With each theme you will find excellent color schema, superb use of typography, plenty of textures, just the right amount of Javascript, and above all – originality. The themes obviously took time to build.

You Can’t Beat 20 Bucks a Year!

I don’t think I can elaborate on this any further. $20 dollars a year gives you unlimited access to all of Elegant Themes. Whether you’re a blog owner, an entrepreneur, or even a web developer – you’ve already won by having this arsenal of elegant designs to beautify your websites; all for about the same price as a bucket of fried chicken. Head on over to Elegant Themes!

Features

The slider in the home page templates are dynamic. Meaning – they are actual posts in your blog that you set in a specified category (i.e. feature) – so they show up in the slider. You can set it to run automatically and are allowed up to eight slides. The slider uses CSSGlobe’s “easy slider“. All images that link to other images automatically loads “FancyZoom” – which which is the amazing javascript zooming effect you see in many modern websites. Monte Cristo also comes with four different “characters” or color schemes: Jacopo is the gray and burgundy guy, Danglars swaggers in brown and taupe, Mondego likes it purple and green while Dantes is different shades of blue.

Why Friendly?

Monte Cristo has a built in options panel where you can set your preferences. Friendly because this way – you don’t have to know HTML, or Javascript to tweak the code. You can set which character you want from the options panel, set the slider categories, automatic or not, plugin your logo files – just about all that you need to customize Monte Cristo to fit your website.

Why Buy?

Monte Cristo is up on sale at ThemeForest.net for a measly $25.00. You can check out the live demo from this link. Why buy if I have been giving away stuff for free? Oh I don’t know – maybe because since I spent a whole lot of time making this theme that I figured I might as well try to make money off of it. Maybe since I give away free support once you purchase is another reason. Or maybe if I make enough money from this that I can now spend more time with my son – teach him not to say bad words like “what the heck“. Of course, its completely up to you.

Updated to Version 1.3 – Drop Down List Support for the Page Navigation!

For those of you who have asked for a drop down list for sub pages – the update is here. I will be glad to send you the update files if you contact me. If you already have Monte Cristo running and have made some edits to the css files – contact me, and I will send you the code to paste in the css files.

Get the Updated Files Here!

The Home Page

The Garamond’s home page mimicks a magazine layout. This was made possible without any special wordpress queries, nor does it filter by categories. Instead, the latest post is automatically styled different. Thanks to this neat trick by Ruhani Rabin. The feature image and the thumbnails are automatically resized upon client request. Meaning, you can upload any size image (preferably wider than 540 pixels – which is the size of the container), assign it to a custom field – and voila! Images are cropped, zoomed and sharpened when once the browser hits it. The code I used is from Darren Hoyt known as TimThumb.

The Inner Pages

The Garamond is a bloggers theme. Traditional templates are intact: search, archive, category etc. I also included an authors bio at the end of each single post, as well as an author template which grabs all their articles. I went a little overboard in styling the subheadings for the post (shown below). The default font family used is of course – Garamond; although since it is not a standard font – Georgia is used as back up. The contrast between the larger text and the tiny Verdana is striking – which I felt was good.

Other Features

The two sidebars and the footer are all widget driven. Comments support Gravatars, pagination as well as multi-level threads. I’ve also added a random quote container right below the header – which requires the Stray Quotes plugin by Italyisfalling.com


You can view the demo from this link, or download directly from here. All I ask is for you leave a comment below – or follow my updates via twitter.

A screenshot of the homepage with coda slider is shown below:

Credits

The small icons used are from Fuque icons, the larger buttons are from the amazing WeFunction, social buttons from Aquaticus and the big vector images are from stinky9. Fonts in the graphics are traditional Helvetica Nueu and Myriad Pro. The code for the slider is Niall Doherty.

You can check the live version of Eureka here, and purchase from this link.