ASCII One: A Free WordPress Theme
e released a couple of WordPress themes over the last months. Some of them were praised, the others were torn apart, but we always tried to always offer a variety of different styles. And today is no exception.
Today we are glad to release ASCII One — a free professional WordPress-theme created by Piotr Godek. This theme was designed with the main focus being on typography — all graphical elements are made only of characters, and it holds for visuals, too. The theme is released with and via Smashing Magazine and is released as a gift to its readers.
Download the theme for free!
This theme is released under GPL. You can use the theme for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, but if you are planning to release your modification, please ask our permission first.
Features of the theme
- typography insired, graphical elements made only of characters,
- widgetized,
- 3 columns + 1 (metadata),
- 2 sidebars for widgets,
- theme works with WordPress 2.6+
- The font used for graphical elements is Museo by Jos Buivenga.
This theme will be supported and upgraded. new versions will be available on Odd Web Things’s site.
Meta-area for the post
Comments to the post
Thank you, Piotr. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.
Last but not least…
You may be interested in the following free WordPress-themes as well:
Recep Kütük
December 2nd, 2008 12:58 amFirst? :)
Wonderful theme! Thanks SM!
Illu
December 2nd, 2008 1:03 amHmmm, not my cup of tea… Thanks for sharing anyway!
Tammy Hart
December 2nd, 2008 1:06 amI like the simplicity of this design, but the colors seem a bit strange to me. Great concept, thanks SM.
archknight79
December 2nd, 2008 1:19 amgood one though. thanks for sharing guys :D
Doublepanno
December 2nd, 2008 1:27 amThx
Cosmi
December 2nd, 2008 1:46 amLovely! I’ll use this theme. Thanks
Curt Simon Harlinghausen | Wunderknabe
December 2nd, 2008 1:51 amNice theme. Flexible to use.
Good work. Thanks and stay tuned . . .
Andrew
December 2nd, 2008 2:46 amIn principle this is a great idea; but it looks a little bit under-developed. You could have maybe used some over-sized fonts to provide a greater impact. It’s got me thinking though.
Martin
December 2nd, 2008 3:17 amI think you are mistaken here … You cannot put such restrictions on a work under the GPL.
Tocki
December 2nd, 2008 3:25 amvery nice theme!
Tom
December 2nd, 2008 3:32 ami really like this theme and design. with ie7 i still have font issues, because all fonts are shown cursiv and i dont know why. in firefox everythings nice and similar like the screenshot.
this theme is sexy and simple and that is hot. with the right header graphic this theme will rock. but aggregado theme is the best so far, and thankfully its free too
hope you get some nice feedback piotr
iamziiim
December 2nd, 2008 3:48 amNice Idea! Thank you very much.
Piotr Godek
December 2nd, 2008 4:15 amIf you notice any technical problems with the theme, please post them as comments here.
Thanks :)
Alex Rainy
December 2nd, 2008 5:30 amNice!
Sebastian
December 2nd, 2008 5:55 amThx for the work, but I don’t like the color scheme. When using a grey background I would suggest softer colors.
Zach Harmon
December 2nd, 2008 6:01 amAw. I’m disappointed. I thought every piece of design would be done in text, but this just has pictures of text. Anyone can do that.
Min Thu
December 2nd, 2008 6:35 amno, not beautiful in my eyes.
Atomised: the web design co-operative
December 2nd, 2008 6:36 amI really don’t like it. Is it just me? I’m not wanting to seem churlish but I think this is really disappointing. The grey is too light I think. I’ve just used grey on our new company site and it can work well but if it’s too light and has has yellow text and symbols added to it it reminds me of tracksuits and sports bag design. All shapes, decals and colors that you would never normally want to see, let alone see together. I also think the layout is tired. We’ve seen this blog layout to death. I’m not trying to be negative. I loved Infinity. I think this is a poor follow up. But it’s all opinion!
Aleso
December 2nd, 2008 7:42 amthanks for sharing.
http://www.3dand2dmag.wordpress.com
Web Major
December 2nd, 2008 7:52 amHonestly… not very impressive. Was this the winner in a 30-minute theme from scratch competition?
Andy Montoya
December 2nd, 2008 8:59 amUhmmm…I didn´t like, for me looks poor.
Cya,
http://andymontoya.com
dev
December 2nd, 2008 9:08 amThis theme really not that good especially some font color are in yellow.
Maik
December 2nd, 2008 10:18 amNot bad, but way to bad for Smashing Magazine.
Andrew Wigglesworth
December 2nd, 2008 12:09 pmHmmm, sorry, but this is a licencing mess, maybe a well intentioned one, but still a mess.
You say that the download is “under the GPL”, and then state:
All versions of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL, which is what I have to assume you are referring to), give a straightforward and explicit permission to distribute source code. This is one of the main purposes of the licence.
Unfortunately, notwithstanding your claim that the download is “under the GPL”, the only licencing information in the download is in the licence.txt file:
So, it’s not all “under the GPL”, and unfortunately this file just leads to further confusion.
For the “GPL”
* There is no such licence as “GPL” and if this is actually referring to the GNU GPL, there is no indication of which version.
* There is no indication which parts of the download are covered by the “GPL”
* There is no copy of the licence enclosed in the download as required.
* The GNU GPL is a licence covering source code, which must be readily identifiable, it is not clear where/what all the source code is or what it would all consist of (eg. images).
* There are no copyright statements and grant of the GNU GPL even in files that could be described as “source code” and therefore no indication that they are covered by a licence.
The GNU GPL is not a good licence for artwork.
For the “modified MIT licence”
* The “modified MIT licence” is too vague a term, there is no indication which licence is actually being referred to.
* For the CSS files to still be under the “revised MIT licence”, they must have a copyright statement and wording of the MIT licence included with them.
exljbris Free Font License Agreement
* Where is the wording of this licence?
* What exactly in this package is covered by the licence?
After a web search I found a text of the “exljbris Free Font License Agreement” on this web page:
http://exljbris.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/font-license-update-modification-now-allowed/
The exljbris licence is a restrictive licence prohibiting distribution and is therefore incompatible with both the GNU GPL (any version) and the MIT licence (any version). This means that they cannot mixed together in the same piece of software.
Furthermore, the same document cannot be covered by any two of the GNU GPL, MIT licence or exljbris Free Font License Agreement at the same time.
All in all the licencing here is a complete mess and as such I would not recommend that anyone use this package.
gideon
December 2nd, 2008 12:13 pmI like the layout. Not my preferred color scheme but not bad either. I think you did a great job and I hope everyone appreciates the work you put into it as much as I do. You would probably get better comments if you would release the.psd files.
Greetings from Amsterdam,
Gideon
Paul
December 2nd, 2008 12:48 pmYou guys just don’t stop giving, it’s like christmas all year long.
Cheers
Jay
December 2nd, 2008 3:40 pmIt’s a wonderful theme but the comments stopped working on my blog when I enabled it.
WilhelmR
December 2nd, 2008 8:58 pmAbout the license: If the user wants to make a modification, release it, sell it, or whatever, he/she doesn’t have to ask for any kind of permission as long as the work is under the GPL.
About the theme: I love it, really nice and simple, nice for design blogs :)
Eli
December 2nd, 2008 10:11 pmIt looks good and unique. I’m not as fussy over freebies as the rest of the people around here.
Piotr Godek
December 2nd, 2008 11:53 pmLicense info:
1) MIT License applies ONLY to BLueprint CSS, not all CSS. MIT license allows for distribution:
The MIT License
Copyright (c)
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.
2) Museo is NOT distributed, it is used in images.
3) Stop picking on the licensing. The theme is free. If you don’t want to use it – don’t.
lazy drunk
December 3rd, 2008 4:13 amVery ugly theme imho. Not like Smashing Magazine.
Brent Ferguson
December 3rd, 2008 11:42 amwow. not impressed at all. I guess you get what you pay for.
Abdel Faiz
December 3rd, 2008 3:32 pmvery nice theme, thanks a lot ^^
gideon
December 3rd, 2008 3:46 pmYep…comments don’t work. I’ll try and figure something out and let u guys know.
Gideon
ne_o
December 4th, 2008 1:45 amThis great them for wordpress. I like it. Thanks a lot
Jay
December 4th, 2008 9:26 am@gideon
Hope you can figure it out. I like the general layout though I also have “two” menus on the right side. I can’t tell if it’s actually two or if it’s wrapping weird.
Anyway, I like that it highlights the latest post kinda like; http://leahculver.com/
I’ll be looking for an update!
TheGreyMan
December 4th, 2008 9:49 amWas going to dive right in and say how much I dislike this… But thought I should pause for breath instead of insulting the creator of this theme. So I did…
Must agree with many of the comments here. It’s not great. It’s not beautiful. And type as image? Why? If you’re going to do that, as someone has already alluded to, surely you could play around with it more, be more adventurous? I’m guessing the rationale for using image-type instead of actual text is more about all that standards malarkey (accessibility, semantics, search engines, et al) which I can understand, but in pure design terms I don’t quite get it. Perhaps that’s just my taste…
I will say that my initial knee-jerk reaction to the screen-grab was not a good one, but I actually thought the theme looked better seeing it context of a live demo…
So, not completely without merit, but not to my taste, and as has already been noted it looks under-developed, really.
James Baldwin
December 4th, 2008 12:02 pmThat’s awesome, thanks for sharing, I shall find a good use for this!
Stephanie
December 4th, 2008 12:40 pm@Piotr: It’s important to “pick on the licensing.” If someone is going to use this theme they need to understand the circumstances in which they can and can’t use it.
Linn
December 5th, 2008 7:50 pmsweet.. looking good..
great theme i guess..
i would have loved it more light background, sorry for too much demanding.
thanks for sharing
Emre Otlu
December 7th, 2008 4:30 pmThank you very much for the great theme. I was searching a simple but artistic theme for my new street phohotography blog.
Nic
July 13th, 2009 7:23 amlook nice~
Tommy
December 10th, 2009 7:15 amWho is e?