Smashing Theme Review
February 24, 2008
Review of Smashing Theme
Smashing Theme is a free Wordpress Template created by Design Disease and is available for free download through the Design Disease website. The website features several other sites that are available for free download and while we like them all, Smashing Theme is the template that we like the best.
About Design Disease
We spent some time looking through the website for Design Disease and from what we can tell; this designer is more than happy to let his (or her) designs speak for themselves! Instead of a lot of banter about nothing, this site focuses on the designs offered by the designer. There are some posts in which the blog author writes his (or her) thoughts about blog design in general, but these are sporadic. There is almost no personal information available.
Smashing Theme
Smashing Theme is a three column template with the major content column landing on the left and the other two “side bars” sitting side by side on the right. This basic layout has become very popular in recent months. This layout is a tricky one. Having the two sidebars next to each other can often make a blog look cluttered, like a refrigerator with too many magnets. Smashing Theme gets around this by color coding the different side bar lists. This helps to differentiate between the different sidebar subjects and adds some color to the site. The background is lightly striped in purples and reds and the major colors of the blog seem to be bright blue, burnt orange and pastel purple. You might think that those colors would clash, but when they are paired with enough white space, they compliment each other nicely.
Customization
This template might not be the best choice for a novice “Template Noodler” but if you have some experience with html and css, you shouldn’t have any trouble changing the fonts, colors and sidebar layouts. The great thing about this template, though, is that very little customization is required. It already looks fantastic so you wont’ have to worry about changing too much.
Hey, awesome theme - thanks for reviewing it!