WordPress Theme Review: Modernist by Rodrigo Galindez

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Minimalist themes have always been my favorite. 98% of the themes I’ve used in all of my blogs have been minimalist themes with excellent typography, plenty of white space, and minimal colors in the palette.

That’s the reason this blog has had a major overhaul in design, paying homage to the Copyblogger theme by Chris Pearson. But I’ll talk more about it in another post. For now, let’s go back to minimalist WordPress themes as this is the subject of my very first theme review here at The Four-eyed Journal.

Behold the the Modernist theme by Rodrigo Galindez.

Theme designer Rodrigo gives the following description:

Modernist is based on the design ideas of Jan Tschichold, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Dieter Rams, and other modernists. Supports widgets, is SEO optimized, has clean and documented code, it’s fast to load, and is WordPress 3.0.1 tested. Works in IE 6 & superior and all versions of Safari/Firefox/Opera. Includes CSS3 enhancements.

Modernist is not a premium theme with all the common bells and whistles, but it is stunningly beautiful, clean and pleasing to the eyes. All thanks to the professionally crafted code that gives life to the theme.

Easy to customize

You can upload your own custom header for customization

It may lack a full-blown theme settings page, but it gives you the freedom to upload your own custom header image. Those who would like to customize the style of Modernist theme can do so easily thanks to the well-documented code which includes CSS3 enhancements.

Social from the start

Modernist is social right out-of-the-box, as links are readily available for your readers to share your posts to Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg and Reddit. It means one less plugin to worry about.

This theme would work best in personal blogs, giving your site a clean, elegant, and relaxed look. It even feels professional thanks to the great typography. I’m using it right now on my personal blog and it just looks great.

The Modernist theme is compatible to WP 3.0.1 and previous versions. Hopefully, it would be updated to take full advantage of the new features of the upcoming WordPress 3.1 as I’m pretty sure post formats would look great when presented by it.

You can give Modernist a preview and download here. Rodrigo offers theme support for an ideal donation of $25.00. Of course you can donate an amount higher or lower, it depends on you.

Lastly, here’s the score I give to the Modernist theme: