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The Best Minimalist WordPress Themes

plaintxt.org — A minimalist design is not the same as a simple one. What very few designers realize, particularly the younger ones, is that most people would rather read something —actually read the words—than look at all of their lines and arrows and silly pictures they’ve screened back.

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  • lubos, on 10/28/2007, -1/+6I think http://www.plaintxt.org/wp-content/uploads/white_as_milk.png is the best out of that list.

    Still, my favorite minimalist blog is http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/
    • neoknight, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4White is the new Black! Coming to blogs this Fall Winter.
    • poipoipoi, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Coding Horror:

      "The productivity benefits of doubling your desktop are well documented by now."

      Then links to a "study" by NEC/Mitsubishi (monitor makers) and ATI (videocard makers).

      Now that's good journalism! [/sarcasm]
    • lalaice, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1great. i like this theme.
      it's simple but beautiful
      plain but nice
    • kalphegor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4and yet the most aesthetically pleasing is The Journalist

      http://www.lucmar.com/the-journalist/
    • WeeklyGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@lalaice

      that was almost a haiku.
  • hixsonj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's good to see designs like this still exist in our hyper-flashy Web 2.0 world. Sometimes designers forget that while some flair can be nice, content is still king.
  • johnxstone, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Great themes, poor use of em dashes.
  • cheam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What about one that you can customize using pictures? Check out www.pic2color.com. It's still in alpha though
  • Surefoot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Some might not qualify this as minimalist because it puts comments on the main index but I like it.

    http://www.lonehorseend.com/wordpress/2005/09/14/my-1st-wordpress-theme-elegant-blue/
    • cosmicsmash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm I don't like this design. Two reasons:
      1. Comic Sans used in the headings
      2. Letter spacing in body text is too small. This has the effect of making the body text difficult to read.
  • sciencebase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Some of these are way cool as my son would say. My own blog http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/index.php ended up being minimalist by accident. I referenced the background images folder in the Ocadia theme incorrectly and ended up with a plain-vanilla version, which works for me...maybe no one else though :-(
    • cosmicsmash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You could jazz it up a little by making your links a different (distinctive) colour - e.g. red.
  • DrinkPaint, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Less is more
  • Shinta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Made of internet and win.
  • id34, on 10/12/2007, -15/+0Mine is pretty fly!

    http://www.efootie.com
    • tvashtar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Good god man it's hideous!
    • tomi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Oh god no. The green you used is horrendous, and the white on black is definitely NOT working out. Then there's the teal boxes...*shakes head*

      In short, ow, my ***** eyes.
    • Kirti, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, the colors could use a little work (ok, a lot more than little). But the layout is pretty nice - so kudos on that.

      - KRK
    • bitbytebit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Your site isn't as bad as some of these people are saying .. its actually pretty good
  • Brajeshwar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2They forgot mine!
    KISS - http://blog.oinam.com/archives/2006/02/oinams-kiss-templates-for-movabletype-typepad-livejournal-wordpress/
    Brajeshwar v7.0 - http://www.brajeshwar.com/archives/2006/05/brajeshwar-v70-wordpress-theme/
    • thatsiebguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like that layout. What did you use for your gallery?
    • Brajeshwar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I do not use any specific Gallery but plan to use Flickr to maintain my gallery for ***** Photo Blog. The publicly available one is manual/static.
    • thatsiebguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Check out FAlbum @ http://www.randombyte.net/blog/

      I use it to integrate my Flickr gallery with my Wordpress site. Very slick.
    • YourTechSupport, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was about to say. KISS is miminal, and has some actual layout and formatting elements to it! http://burke.godswitch.com/ - It's perfect for my blog, which I occassionally actually post to!
  • rekka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've just built my own Wordpress theme. These could of been handy because it's easier to look at a more simple, less 'messy' theme to understand how Wordpress theming works and then adapt that.
  • fdemmer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"Wordpress > Error"
  • thatsiebguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Someone didn't use the WP-Cache plugin..
  • macewan, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1http://www.washingtonnc.org/
  • munkt0n, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3how very boring, unless you're Jakob Nielsen, in which case you'd be masturbating furiously over these 'designs'
  • spider418, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You didn't miss anything. The real page looks exactly the same.
  • picturesnstuff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They didn't mention unsleepable_v16 (http://openswitch.org/extras/). Definitely one of my favorites although not quite as minimalist as those shown. I'm with the poster on how readers would prefer to see content than flashy lines and arrows.

    Flashy is nice though :)

    I've been modding it into a photoblog of sorts here: http://www.picturesnstuff.co.uk (I know the logo at the top sucks - it's work-in-progress :) )
    When I get time I'll try and tidy up all the hacks I've made to the lightbox stuff, add EXIF support then put the code on the site.
  • Dawneb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1People decorate their homes to reflect who they are, the same holds true for personal blogs and sites. Those of us that have the benefit of working in this industry, should really show a little more tolerance, especially when it comes to new folk that are just starting out. Even if some would appear to be colour blind or really think those wavy reflexion applets are rockin cool. Everyone, no matter how high brow they think their design/layout is now, at one point in their early web life used something horrendous and thought it rocked - don't try and deny it, you know it's true. :)
    • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Heh, and some of us grab the first design we see, hack it half way to usability, throw it up and promise to re-tool it later when we're not so busy... which never comes.
  • frankbardon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I personally think that minimalist design does not take full advantage of color, shape and line to organize thoughts and ideas. I find it hard to read most "minimalist" blogs because usually there is no clear separation of thought. Instead of complete minimalism, I prefer subtle color and shape to define content. I tend to employ photography to emphasize an idea within copy...

    That's just me though.
  • rmmcclay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Minimalist? Just disable CSS via the WebDev extension in Firefox and the whole net becomes Zen.

    Better yet: lynx.
  • aperezny, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Here is a great minimalist theme with a lot of functionality.
    I HAEV STYEL you can see it in use here: http://www.blogico.net
  • volscio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"What very few designers realize, particularly the younger ones, is that most people would rather read something —actually read the words—than look at all of their lines and arrows and silly pictures they’ve screened back."

    I love self-righteous comments like that. "Particularly the younger ones." What does that even mean? Are you in tune with the web design community? Most of the well-known ones are older now and parrot the same ol' "standards or bust" tune that produces homogeneous web sites with no creativity and no content. But at least it validates!
    • MrKlaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was with you until you implied that adherence to web standards are in some way detrimental to good visual design and content (????).

      Also, to the original post, in this case a minimalist design is indeed the same as a simple one.
    • WeeklyGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Lack of creativity and homogenous web sites are a product of uninteresting designers, not standards-adherance. Validation freaks are silly, but web design is like any other art. You learn the basics first, the "right" way to do things, only after that can you start branching out and doing things differently and creatively.
  • svirsk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm also working at a minimalistic, but not too boring theme at http://www.svirsk.org/blog I'll post it as a theme when i''m done.
  • swallick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Please remember that minimalism is not a substitution in design for more rich, enhanced sites, re: my comparison of Kalibre and Google designs. They're sites that have completely different purposes and require entirely different designs. Minimalism is just one of many lovely design theories. And it's the one I prefer.

    And I hate to point this out, but the use of em dashes in my post (e.g., mdash;) is completely consistent and style appropriate, http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/cmosfaq.HyphensEnDashesEmDashes.html
    • MarkHarrison, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0You mentioned the Chicago styleguide, of which I'd never heard.
      Despite the fact that I earn good money wielding the written word.

      The styleguide on my bookshelf is the Economists you see,
      I bought the printed version - it used up half a tree.

      I pondered on the em-dash, and wondered what they said
      but when I looked upon the shelf, I had to scratch my head.

      The book it wasn't there, so I didn't have a choice,
      I had to use the other guide - the one by Dr. Suess
    • swallick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Off topic:

      Anyone who has never heard of the Chicago Manual of Style has never served in a serious editorial capacity and is foolish to give advice to others who are clearly more informed.

      The Economist style guide is good for thsoe working in an UK and publishing for a magazine called The Economist. And accordingly, the use of em dashes in the article is serial and parenthetical.
      http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=805697
  • betona, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thank you, submitter! I was looking for something just like this the other day.
  • paku, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A little off-topic.. but I see this "ajax'ish image-viewing-popup-script" everywhere (demonstrated here: http://www.picturesnstuff.co.uk/) but I can't seem to find the source for this anywhere.

    Does anyone know what this is called, or where I can find code on how to do this?
  • deltaphi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0thank you for that link. was searching for a nice and simple theme
  • VaamYob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I didn't design the following theme, but it's as minimalist as I'd want my site to be.

    http://rane.hasitsown.com/
    • swallick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yes, just my style. I quite like that theme, VaamYob.
  • waalter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm a fan of minimalism, but my gripe with all of these designs in particular is that they're way too generic. You can create a minimalist design without a stark white background decorated solely with black text.

    I consider Digg a minimalist design, but it still conveys a sense of personality and leaves a lasting impression on the viewer.
  • porkstacker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2As a web designer, it pains me to look at Wordpress-themed websites of "designers". Anyone who uses a prepackaged Wordpress theme IS NOT A DESIGNER!!!!!!!!! Real desingers design and use their own stuff.
    • swallick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ummm... that is my design. Not sure what the porkstacker is ranting about.
    • porkstacker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"Ummm... that is my design. Not sure what the porkstacker is ranting about."

      No, I wasn't attacking the designer of the Wordpress theme (you, in this case), rather, in the past several months I have seen a handful of websites of self-proclaimed "designers", who revel in their "excellence in design" of "their own web design" when in fact they are using existing Wordpress CSS templates--as someone who actually went to Chico State University and the U.C. Santa Cruz certification program for Graphic Design and Visual Communication alongside having worked for a design firm and as a freelance designer from 1989 - 1997, it cracks me up to see these false claims of these "designers". That is all I was trying to say, but apparently my original statement did not include enough words.
    • swallick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ah. Yes. I know what you're talking about now. Yes, that is frankly ridiculous. Hate to say it, but I've even found a few sites that have downloaded my themes, grabbed my posts ala RSS, and created a "mirror" site of mine. Which is really, really annoying.

      But I digress. I agree. If you're a designer you should have designed something. You can't call yourself a taxi driver unless you drive a taxi.
  • lilgryph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks for the heads up on that FAPlugin. Just what I've been looking for. Cheers
  • simianstyle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think hemingway should be up there
  • LabRat777, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Content hasn't been king for a long time. I wish it weren't true but in most cases it is.
  • blogosquare, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0my favs minimalist theme is the myJournal ethereal for a white light design and ColourFull Wall for the black dark one.

    In my opinion if anyone wants to start a minimalist approach theme, try these blank skins wordpress themes and start playing with some colours. Minimalist theme most of the time won't have header images and very little to no icons. That's it all. No how-to required for this lol.
  • syafthegeek, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Sometimes minimalist is much better.
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