By the same maker as minimalist Visualization and the Gridline series, Monochrome is a visually arresting theme that places a lot of emphasis on images. So if your photos are not as great as the ones featured on the site, then you may way to think again. Monochrome has a lot of solid magazine-style features, like category-based-navigation (with dropdown subcategories), as well as category representation under the main feature and above the big footer. Check out variations Monochrome Gallery, Monochrome Author and Monochrome Lite.

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The creators call this theme a “premium blog” and not “premium magazine” theme, but we’re including it here anyway as a robust blog or gallery/photo-heavy theme.

The focus on typeface (Helvetica / Georgia / Verdana / Courier used) and reliance on images is the main draw with this very clean and modern looking theme. It’s available in free and premium ($45); premium comes with all views, page templates, support as well as no branding.

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This minimalist theme takes a pyramid approach to content display — one feature story/large image, beneath that three smaller features (with smaller images), then as the base, five thumbnail features bolstered by a big footer. The main nav menu is a bit different than many themes in that it incorporates both pages and categories (sub pages and categories in drop down). An upper nav repeats the categories. Overall a nice theme, but the white space beneath the main story seems underutilized. If you like this theme, you may also want to check out Gridline, a theme by the same maker, Graph Paper Press.

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From the same maker (Graph Paper Press) as Visualization, this minimalist theme itself has a number of variations — Gridline Lite and Gridline News.

This theme is similar to Visualization, except the 2nd tier of featured stories are adjacent to the main story instead of beneath them — a layout I personally prefer. The main nav menu also incorporates both pages and categories (which means that subcategories are relegated to a drop down). I like the theme’s look-and-feel, but think it would benefit from categories directly on the nav instead of under Categories. Another minor point — it would be nice if the search box was bigger and more prominent.

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Beautiful theme. Definitely in the design-y camp and probably less for those who are interested in a text-heavy site. But I see applications of this including a recipe site, an agency website, or perhaps a travel site — anything where a visual representation of the information would have more of an impact.

Unique features: LOVE the text and # of comments overlaid on images, simple and effective color scheme, and the list of categories with counts of posts elegantly implemented in the footer.

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