Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress and co-creator of the Genesis Framework, has a new block theme in the directory called Bright Mode. The theme features a vibrant color palette with tasteful gradients, 14 beautifully designed block patterns, and so many fun variations tucked into custom block styles.
It’s difficult to nail down a niche for many block themes, as patterns and templates make them flexible enough to serve just about any use case. Bright Mode falls into this category. It could easily be used as a business or personal website, blog, or portfolio.
If you look closely, you can see subtle hints of Gardner’s trademark style. It’s forthright and minimalist with meticulous attention to typography and spacing. The colors are bright but harmonious and balanced, so it doesn’t preclude Bright Mode from use in professional contexts.
Gardner has a unique perspective as one of the OG theme authors from the early days of WordPress theming when everything was just getting started. He helped kick off the commercial theme ecosystem with his Revolution theme and continues to bring that same trailblazing spirit to the new world of block themes.
“Last summer, I read an article written by Justin Tadlock about block patterns and the pattern directory (which was in beta at the time,)” Gardner said. “He linked to it, and I spent a few minutes clicking around. Finally, I saw a pattern I thought was cool and clicked the ‘copy pattern’ button. I wanted to see how this all worked, so I opened up a post on my blog and pasted the code. Voila, there it was. At that moment, I knew—the potential of modern WordPress flashed before me.”
Gardner’s new theme makes use of patterns to define every section you see in the demo. Bright Mode offers a colorful array of patterns that users can insert into their sites, including a cover image with heading, text, and buttons, multiple testimonials, different query layouts, and multiple footer and header designs. View the demo to see them all in action with sample content.
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This article was written by Sarah Gooding and originally published on WP Tavern.