Back in the Stone Age, “blog” was the word of the year and old media was scrambling to add any semblance of an online entity. Then, many believed that blogs would eventually take the place of most sections of the newspaper, just as Craigslist replaced classifieds.
However, if the latest trend in Wordpress templates is any indication, blogs are shifting to more magaziney layouts. A glance at several of the new themes suggests that several trends are beginning to emerge:
- The old format of a single column of posts (such as found on this blog) is slowly giving way to themes where multiple columns and multiple sizes are utilized.
- The use of categories as a design tool, where assigning a post’s category affects where it is placed on the page.
- What began as a “widgetization” of the sidebar is evolving into several more modular designs in the content area
- The heavy use of thumbnails
- The heavy use of custom field for theme effects
Interesting in doing the same for your blog/magazine/newspaper? Here is a list of a few themes/sites I have found:
- Visualization
- Mimbo
- Tube Guitar
- Diet Pixie
- The Premium News Theme list
- A whole list of magazine themes
- More the same list
*cough* foreshadowing *cough* 
6 Comments to “Blog is the new magazine (and a list of themes)”
Posted: Feb 1st, 2008 at 5:21 am
Unfortunately, many good blogs lack the art direction of a magazine. If you can get as good a design as `copybloggger or freelanceswitch, you may be on to somthing.
Posted: Feb 1st, 2008 at 5:46 am
[…] Blog is the new magazine - I wonder if Sean Blanda, the author of this article was inspired by a similar piece I wrote last […]
Posted: Feb 1st, 2008 at 9:19 pm
I agree completely. It’s going to start being easier for us as journalist to start our own blog and turn it into a magazine.
Posted: Feb 4th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
[…] Blog is the new magazine (and a list of themes) “If the latest trend in Wordpress templates is any indication, blogs are shifting to more magaziney layouts.” (tags: wordpress blogging magazines newpapers) […]
Posted: Feb 5th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
[…] « Blog is the new magazine (and a list of themes) 05 Feb […]
Posted: Feb 6th, 2008 at 9:42 am
[…] even really have to be Drupal. It could be Wordpress, or Django. Sean Blanda points to a list of magazine-style themes for Wordpress, and just ported his own college paper to Wordpress MU. See where this is going? (Django’s […]
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