We spent the day today hammering out some ideas for a new Museum Theme. We wanted to do something for those typophiles and writers out there; something minimalist with an emphasis on typography and a unique design. The result is Ex Libris, which will be coming very soon.
Design options
Ex Libris will have 3 different modes (for the home page, at least). The first (pictured above) is a standard page-style layout. If you want your content to be the focus, and have a lot of static pages, this is the design for you.
Next, there will be a more traditional blog layout (pictured right). This will give you a sidebar, post excerpts and a familiar post format. You will also be able to use this on a blog page if you’re using a static page for your home page or the…
Magazine-style home page (below). This option will feature your most recent post prominently, with older posts displayed in columns below. We haven’t started coding yet, so you can be sure we’ll be adding other features when we are digging through the code. One idea is to use the featured post area in the magazine layout for static home page content rather than a blog post. Another idea is to allow the number of subsequent posts to be configurable from the options page.
Typographic control
The other thing we wanted to do with this theme is to give you, not only custom font embeds, but to allow you to choose what types you want to use for what parts of the page. We’ll be bundling several gorgeous fonts and font families from the talented Jos Buivenga’s exljbris font foundry (which also inspired the name of the theme). exljbris has earned many notable mentions on MyFonts and is responsible for the Museo family you see on this site (and on the recently redesigned jazzsequence.com).
We’re excited about this new theme, and can’t wait to share it with you. If there are features or ideas for things you’d like to see included in this theme, let us know in the comments!
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