Robbie Manson
Main Navigation: —I'm Robbie Manson, an interface designer at FreeAgent in Edinburgh, Scotland. Follow me on Twitter as @rougebert, if you fancy.
Vignelli is a free minimal Tumblr theme; strong in grid and restrained in type
Tumblr is a superb microblogging platform for folks who want to get up and running with minimum hassle. The feature set is constantly improving and there are already a number of good themes available. However, when I was searching for a minimalist-style theme for my own account, I couldn’t find one I was particularly happy with.
I decided to create to my own free minimal Tumblr theme, inspired loosely by the great Modernist Massimo Vignelli, and the style of my own blog.
Install Vignelli Tumblr theme v1.3 →
Colour customisation
Colours for the following elements are completely customisable once the theme has been installed:
- Top border colour
- Site title colour
- Link colour
- Link hover colour
- Button colour
- Button hover colour
- Post title colour
- Post title link colour
To customise these colours, click ‘Customize’ from the site menu in your Dashboard, then ‘Appearance’ from the menu bar.
Twitter status and social links
To show your latest Twitter status and links to other accounts you have on the web, simply add your own usernames under the ‘Appearance’ menu on your Tumblr ‘Customization’ screen.
- Tags — minimalism, Resources, tumblr
- Short — http://rob.mn/bWr4A9
- Twitter — Tweet this
Hello Robbie!
You did a really nice work. The theme looks very nice and is functional too. I just have one suggestion: would be nice to have a button at the end of the page to back or go for the next one.
Keep up the great work.
Best regards.
Rodolfo
Great suggestion Rodolfo, thanks. I’ve now added pagination underneath the posts and also removed the ‘[x] notes’ link if no notes exist for the post, which will help tidy things up a bit.
I’ve submitted these changes to Tumblr, so give it a day or so before grabbing the latest version. Thanks again!
Perfect! it was really fast and is working very well. thank you!
Great theme – simple but not plain. I think it would be cool to have a small section where your “likes” appear, but maybe you don’t want to clutter the page?
Thank you!
@L.B: As you say, I’m conscious not to clutter the theme. However, I’ll look into the possibilities of implementing this kind of feature and weight up the options. Thanks for the suggestion.
I just started my Tumblr account and am using this template. I love the look of it! One question: is it only possible for followers and those I follow to comment/ask questions? I’d like to be able to allow my family, and friends who don’t have Tumblr accounts to do so, but the settings don’t seem to allow this.
@Angela: Provided you’ve signed up for a Disqus account and added your Disqus Shortname under the Appearance menu on the Customize screen, anyone should be able to comment on your posts. At least, that’s the way I understand it to work.
Hi Robbie!
I also recently started using Tumblr, along with this theme. It’s clean, flexible, attractive and easy to customize. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Hi Robbie, is there any way for me to add my own logo to the page?
Hey Robbie,
I love this theme.
Is it compatible with adding static pages?
Thanks.
Hi Robbie! This is by far the best theme I have ever found for free. Clean, simple, but extremely beautiful. =D
Just a few questions, is it possible to make the links to the pages in the title of the post instead of the date? I think it might be weird for some people.
Also, how can I add text on the sidebar?
Hi Robbie,
Thanks for the awesome theme! i totally <3 it!
However, would it be possible to have multiple pics w/in one post to be displayed separately, one after the other (as opposed to having them as part of a moving photoset)? you can set a maximum # of photos to be displayed if you like in order to stay with the minimalist theme. also, currently it is not possible to get a high-res image of the pics when clicking on photos within the moving photoset.
Cheers.
@Tom: To the best of my knowledge, it’s not possible to replace your site title with an image.
@Fernando: Vignelli is indeed compatible with static pages :)
@Gary: I’ve just submitted an updated version of the theme to Tumblr which makes the title of each post the permalink to the post’s own page. This is so obvious, I’m really not sure how I missed it! It should be available to install in a day or two. You can add your Twitter status and social links to the sidebar using the instructions I’ve provided at the end of the article above, or simply add your own text by editing the raw theme code within Appearance > Theme (be careful though!).
Hi!
Your theme is great but there is a problem with “no search results” page i.e. when nothing is found, you don’t get any message about it, there is just blank space. Example: http://robbiemanson.tumblr.com/search/fww as opposed to http://robbiemanson.tumblr.com/search/blog Would you please tell me how to fix it (add my custom message when there are no search results), or preferably – update the theme?
Best,
Piotr
Love the theme, but I have issue with a side bar URL link. I added my other website URL under the appearance menu in Website but on the page it just goes to my Tumblr page, when I inspect the source the link is empty. I entered the link as standard valid URL. Same result if I used the Blog field.
Angus, sorry to get into Robbie’s shoes, but I had the same issue and I think I know what to do. You have to edit the raw theme code within Appearance > Theme, and if you wanted the link to go to, say, youtube.com, find this:
and change it into
and this:
Elsewhere
{block:IfWebsiteAddress}
…..BLAH, BLAH, BLAH
and change it into Elsewhere
{block:IfWebsiteAddress}
YouTube
You can see the result at my site (http://teksto.tk)
If you want more links, repeat these steps where applicable.
P
Oh, bugger, looks like I can’t post the full solution in here because it gets cut out. Sorry (Robbie and Angus) for my chaotic writing above. And Angus, write me at: p.slusarski@gmail.com unless Robbie comes here sooner and gives you your answer.
@Piotr thanks very much for the feedback, but I managed to fix it properly myself. The problem is with the name of the text fields. Both the blog and website text fields are defined as “Website Address” and “Blog Address”
meta name=”text:Website Address” content=”"
but where they are used on the page the reference is missing the ” Address” part of the name in both cases. So I simply changed the call to the full name and it works as expected.
href=”{text:Website Address}”
This needs fixing in the theme.
Alright then. BTW, do you happen to know how to fix this: http://blog.robbiemanson.com/resources/vignelli-minimal-tumblr-theme/comment-page-1/#comment-246
?
Sorry Piotr, that search issue is well beyond me.
@Piotr I’ve added the {block:NoSearchResults} block to the theme, displaying a ‘Sorry, there are no results…’ message for search queries that return no results.
@Angus Great spot with the ‘Website Address’ and ‘Blog Address’ hooks. I’ve now amended these in the theme, as per your solution.
Apologies for the delay in catching up with the issues, and thanks for your investigative work. The updated version of the theme should be available in a couple of days.
Fantastic, thanks Robbie.
Hi Robbie,
I tried to use this for my blog about “pictures of lizards in dungarees” and it’s not worked. Can you re-do the whole thing so that it works please?
Yours, entrustingly…
Alex.
Robbie, I don’t know why, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I’ve added this NoSearchResults block to the theme (copied it from the updated version), but it does nothing. The blank space remains. See: http://teksto.tk/search/urtuu
How come?
Piotr: The latest version of the theme is being used on the Vignelli theme Tumblr account and the NoSearchResults block is working as expected there — http://vignelli.tumblr.com/search/urtuu
I honestly don’t know why it’s not working for you.
Robbie,
I’ve been slowly modifying Vignelli for my website, Obscene NYC.
As much as I love the design (best Tumblr theme by far) I am most impressed with the formatting and organization of the CSS and HTML. I’ve been easily able to modify things without hopelessly debugging sloppy code in Firebug for hours.
I’m taking notes on your clean code and styling from here on out. Keep fighting the good fight!
- Ryan
Hey Ryan, so glad to hear Vignelli is working out for you. I’m a stickler for keeping code clean and tidy, especially when I know people will be digging around in it. Good to know it’s all worth it!
Great job on the modifications. Oh, and thanks for introducing me to Tame Impala — awesome!
Hi Robbie,
I’ve been trying to understand this issue about Markdown rendering using your theme. It also occurs in some other themes that I tried on tumblr.
For example, if we write a code snippet (4 spaces indentation):
Code Snippet
Then, this section after the code snippet will have no spacing.
I wonder if you know anything about this.
Hi Robbie,
Love the theme, but I’m wondering if there’s anyway for me to remove the date? Please let me know if it’s possible for me to do this in the custom HTML..
Thank you,
Tasha
Jesse: Can you point me towards an example post where this is happening?
Tasha: Just add the following to the CSS within the Custom HTML window:
#aside .date {display: none;}
I did tried this on my blog, now I just created a tumblelog for this.
Visit this site: http://dnamra.tumblr.com/
Jesse: Sorry for the delayed response. The ‘pre’ element you’re using to wrap your code in didn’t have a bottom margin applied to it in the CSS. I’ve add a bottom margin and submitted the source code to Tumblr. It’ll be available soon from the themes own page soon. I’ve also emailed you a copy of the new source code, should you need it right away.
Thanks, it renders fine now.
Just installed Vignelli. Much better than the silly light Helvetica jquery mason thing I had on the go. I write too much for that and needed to get back to a single column of entries. Thanks!
I am concerned that the colour of the visited links and even the text may be too light for some people. Have you considered adding those to the Appearance options?