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While I don’t think either of these themes are right for me, I do like their simple and clean look, especially with Minnow. Nice additions! :)

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Nice..

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Minnow without header is like car without wheels…

Cols is hard to read and doesen’t support Gallery post format

All new themes are with important missing functions. Probably to sell premium themes. Instead of 300 buggy free themes made 1-2 but perfect with all functions – all post formats, flexible header, colors and so on…

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Thanks for another two free themes. We now have plenty to choose from :)

The Science Geek

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Cols is the ideal theme for longform posts. Since I write both short and long texts, but mainly short ones (that look unsightly in a multi-column layout), it would be nice to have two types of standard formats: single-column and multi-column. However, a great theme!

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Cols works extremely well with longterm articles but can get a bit messy when it comes to multiple gallery posts. Nice work!

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Long form*

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These look great. However, I wonder if there will be any more Halloween themed sites coming up soon?

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how do I change the theme I am currently using?

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Both are good. But, Minnow is kind of awesome.

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This one is so underrated! Thanks for a great design – the screenshot gave me the impression of a simple single column layout but it is really versatile and has so many options. I highly recommend anyone interested check it out on the theme showcase http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/harmonic/ . Love your work!

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Ooooh this looks pretty

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It’s beautiful I pull a lot of thoughts from the picture.

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Great theme! This is the most creative free WP theme in a looooong time. Overall, it is original, well executed, flexible and beautiful. Well done!

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This is a lovely theme I plan to use as it is great for artists too! Also, thank you so much for addressing my issues over in the support forums :)

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so Nice…. elegent

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Gorgeous design, Tammie! And its also responsive. <3 I'd love to see what other designs that you come up with in future.

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New Theme Harmonic this looks very interesting Thank you

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Nice.

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Nice looking theme. Anyone try it out yet?

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Like (y)

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Great theme! I already activated it a few days ago

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Beautiful♥

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And we all want to be the Tesla of bloggers. We want to be the Tesla of everything. Guess I can be the Tesla of #HappyDonut eaters!

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Just switched to this theme. Love it!

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Beautiful themes! I guess it’s time to think about some changes in my blog’s appearance.

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Me too – love it !

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Excellent theme.

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Very nice theme! The only thing I would change is the size or placement of the custom header. I found it a bit awkward that the header can be so wide but the page contents so much thinner.

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The theme is good, but it will be good to have better font. Or is there any feature, I can change the font?

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Yes — like Beyond the Black Mountain, the blog featured in this post, you can get the Custom Design upgrade, which includes Custom Fonts.

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The theme looks good.

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I love this theme! I just switched yesterday. custom features are cool too. I have been unhappy with some of the free themes of late. They never look anything like the ones advertised even after you try to customise them yourself. This one just took a few clicks and it was done. Beautiful!

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It would be great to see The Simfo Theme featured, as well as other Premium themes. I am interested in viewing how others have customized their Blog and/or website using The Simfo Theme, as I am currently using it for my site at http://www.stylescheme.com. Additionally, if possible, a CSS tutorial would also be very helpful and much appreciated. Thank you so much for asking and have a wonderful week!

Very versatile and yet easy on the eye. Positive addition to the world.

Thanks for highlighting my blog. I have to admit the extra stats/attention confused me a little at first. Really appreciate the mention.

My pleasure — I’m happy I stumbled on it!

Thanks for the suggestion, DawnMarie. We’ll definitely highlight some premium themes as well in future posts.

As for CSS, beyond our support pages on the topic, we also ran a three-part tutorial last year; you can find the relevant posts here, here, and here. I hope you find them useful!

Any idea how to reduce the font size for the Kelly Theme without upgrading to the $99 premium account?

Please help me. I can’t upload picture. What shall i do.

It’s nice to see less photo-oriented themes being promoted! Pictures just aren’t my thing, so oftentimes I’ll opt-out on adding a picture.

Hi Ben, thanks so much for the kind words about my blog, Curated Style! I appreciate the kinds words and promotion.The Kelly theme is lovely although I noticed the formatting changes depending on the screen/browser (ie. pictures and texts won’t always look centered). Not sure if I’m going to stay with Kelly, but it is lovely and I like the simplicity.

My pleasure! I suspect that the layout differences you’re seeing are a result of the theme’s responsiveness — it tries to optimize the viewing experience depending on the screen size you’re looking at.

In any case, I’m glad to hear you’ve been enjoying Kelly — and curious to see what you’d pick if/when you decide to switch themes.

You’ll find all the information you need on uploading images on this support page.

You don’t need WordPress.com Premium to change font sizes — you can accomplish that with the Custom Design upgrade, which includes Custom Colors, Custom Fonts, and Custom CSS. You can find more information about that upgrade here.

Aah, awesome, I didn’t see that! Thanks a lot :-)

I love Edin too. Can you tell what the default fonts are for the theme? Thanks!

I like Edin.

I like the little touches like the font size for the caption text below images – very discreet.

And I like the ample white space between posts.

I am not so keen on the size of the text in blockquoted text because it dominates a bit – particularly with it being a serif font.

The way the menu opens and covers everything in blue was pretty startling the first time I did it – I though there was a bug.

Edin looks a great theme, will have to check it out.

Fantastic looking theme! Thank you for creating it.

how can i change thems?

It’s using PT Sans (https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/PT+Sans) and PT Serif (https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/PT+Serif)

Thanks for noticing. We will have a look at it. :)

Support page: http://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/ :)

It’s very generous that Edin is free. I’ll recommend it to a friend who is just starting up his one man firm.

This theme is really nice. Might use it for my next theme :)

I have used this theme in my Japanese blog.

Great! Hope you’re enjoying it.

I like how the site looks on my mobile phone with this theme. I hope I can use this theme on my blogjob account.

I was going to ask which theme is best for mobile phones! Maybe one of these will be!

It would be nice if WP had actual video tutorials on how to set up these various themes. They seem difficult to set up and manage. I tried pictorico and couldn’t get it to do anything I wanted. Maybe it’s just me.

If you have questions on specific themes, you can post them in the Themes Forum: http://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/themes

We have video tutorials for some tasks in our Support site, but not everything.

Many of our newer themes in the Theme Showcase are responsive, which means that they’re designed to look great on various screen sizes (computer, tablet, phone): http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/features/responsive-layout/

A great way to check if a theme is for you? Visit a site using that theme on your own device — ie, check out one of these blogs on your phone and see how it looks, and if that look is right for you.

Really like this theme. If I start another blog which is more pictorial I think I could use it.

Switched my blog to this theme. It is much nicer than the previous one, especially on mobile devices. I also like the infinite scrolling and the room for widgets on a clean modernist look.

Finally Free Themes! WOOO HOOO

Very nice theme but i prefer other ones, like Elegant Grunge or the theme i have now.
Obviously it’s only my personal opinion :)

Thanks for introducing Bosco. It’s looks like a clean and simple theme with features I need. Its easy to read fonts are appealing and the single column showcases content by eliminating sidebar distractions. I’ll be trying it out in my test blog.

I thought this was new! Just adopted it for my Writing 101 Challenge blog. Perfect for simplicity.

Bosco looks great. What matters to me more and more is having a theme that looks great on mobile devices.

Kind of excited! As a vintage typographer and graphic artist I’m breathless about the copy-photo-graphic layout features, the combination of a classic serif font within a smaller font-size and leading config’, and the simplistic elegance. Off to source where/how the sidebar material resides … to decide whether this can work as a literary person’s business platform.

Great theme! While I personally prefer a lot of customization, I’m gonna recommend this to a friend who is into minimalism.

I probably won’t be trying it out because I love my current theme, but I could recommend it to my friend, who loves themes like this.

fun fun! I always like checking out new themes.

Arcade might be the best theme you’ve released in a while. :) I’ll have to take a closer look!

I do like the look of Arcade!

arcade looks amazing :O but free themes have always appealed to the poor student in me. kelly is pretty amazing too. Now i have a new theme ^_^

I like them both. Who knows? I may fall in love with one or the other be using one soon on one of my blogs, or maybe I maybe using both as I have two blogs.

These look great. Will have to give them a go.

Arcade seems really amazing.

A free theme that looks good – thank you for your work Kelly!

Kelly has the same problem that so many others do; the font is grey. It’s too light to read. I’m not 100 years old, or even close to half that, and I should be able to read other people’s blogs. Why can’t the default setting be black?

You never change Expound :)

I love the Arcade theme – it’s fun without being too cutesy and handles images nicely. Very tempting!

I love the ‘splash of colour’ in Kelly’s theme. It reminded me straight off of a couple of other themes, but looking closer, there is a difference and I’m quite liking it! For me though, I am a sucker for having a ‘sidebar’. Bar that, as design goes, the colour and typography makes it preferable over the other similar themes. Good job Kelly!

Note that while Kelly has a clean single column for content, there are widget areas available that show up below the content.

I know Kirk, and it did make me think ‘maybe’ for a moment, I just prefer having a sidebar for widgets though this *may* change as I’m really liking her theme. And as I write story’s, displaying them in a single column is the ‘maybe’ that got me thinking.

Hm, every time I read these posts, I drool for a beautiful minimalist theme! But I chose my themes partly because navigation and interaction for visitors was transparent. I haven’t chosen many swoon-worthy themes because I feel that in the balance, visitors, especially from outside WP, won’t be able to navigate the site on account of the ‘hidden’ menus, though I realise they’re hidden to showcase the work. Am I completely wrong about this?

With Illustratr, your primary menu can actually still be visible near the header if you want it that way (that’s how the featured bloggers here use it). As for ‘tucked’ / hidden menus on other themes, it’s really a personal call — some visitors might find those less intuitive to find and use, though it’s also true they’ve become quite common of late.

Illustratr keeps popping up everywhere I look lately. Love the different looks you can get.

Would love to see a theme specifically geared for flip books.

Hi Michelle, I discovered the Twenty Fourteen theme by chance, and we are using it for our TravelBloggers.on.WordPress blog. I’m very pleased with the result, one has a lot of options to customize it. And my favorite feature is the nifty slider on the front page!
http://internationaltravelbloggers.wordpress.com/

Is it possible to customize this theme to look like 2013/2012? I mean with just blog posts in the front, one after the other without the magazine layout. I guess magazine looks good for blogs that publish images with every post. Most of our blogs are text rich. Hence we want to avoid magazine layout.

Thanks for the ideas! Might change up my blogs!

Yes, that’s what champagne&backpacks, the first blog featured here, has chosen — just a list of posts.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I saw that yesterday. I have now applied 2014 in my blog – yaaayyyy :D

Definitely saw all the perks with twenty fourteen – was my first and is my last choice :)

One other detail: custom menus can be deleted with CSS if you want a simpler version of a theme that includes one. That’s what I did and I’ve been very happy with the result.

This is probably a stupid question but i’ll ask it anyway. I am using the Twenty Ten theme and I was wondering if or how I can use the same sort of slide show that you have that Global Art Junkie uses in the On Demand theme, or is that kind of thing only available on certain themes?

It would be interesting to see an updated list of the free and premium themes that support WordAds.

The post slider feature is available only on some themes. Here’s a list of those that support the post slider feature.

You can sort themes by the features the support over at the Theme Showcase. Here’s a list of the themes that support WordAds.

Thank you for your reply this helps a lot.

Yep, I’m using it too, have been for a couple of weeks :)

Where have I heard the name Aaron Buckley before? Gonna look him up :)

Has anyone actually been brave enough to use this theme to rewrite some of Hemingway in “earnest?”

That right there sounds like a solid reason to try out this theme!

OK I’ll give it a go instead of “There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

How about, “There is no friend as loyal as a blog”.

There you go “Hemingway Rewritten”.

I really like this theme. Visually it’s so clean. I’ve had more compliments on my blog since I changed to it (and of course, feel free to pay it a visit!)

I don’t remember what the default theme was when I started my blog a few weeks back, but as soon as I found Hemingway Rewritten I latched onto it and haven’t considered any other themes.

I just started a blog this week and chose this theme for its clean look. Didn’t realize it was such a new theme. Still learning all the ways to customize it so love having real world samples of the same theme to look at.

I’m glad you showed this because I tried the Hemingway template and couldn’t quite get it right for me, but I’m impressed by the examples here and might give it another go

Life, Love & Lucy seems to be a pretty theme.

I too changed my theme to Hemingway Rewritten over the past week. I love the fact you can have different headers for each page, and the simple, but clean overall look.

Really enjoy these re-caps, Ben. Sometimes I miss stuff and this fills in the gaps. Any chance you can do a personal re-cap of my week each Monday? I seem to have a lot of missing gaps there, too… ;)

Thank you for reinstating the ‘open in separate window’ click: it saves an enormous amount of manual coding.

I have just begun reading these posts and anticipate some helpful tips. It may take me some time but your information is appreciated.B

Love these posts, and the way it is written, what i yet miss as a blogger is the ability to write in my own personal and unique way, but i am sure after some time it will come up itself :)

So, looking at the numbers…

As a parent who may perhaps rely on beer and wine ocassionally, and a dog person who doesn’t really ‘get’ cats, and a comitted blogger who did their best to contribute to the nearly 11 billion words pressed…

I feel nicely represented here. Nice one. Time to crack on with April!

This is one of my fav WP posts of the month. Love reading the stats and seeing what everyone was up to. LOVE this!

Can’t wait ’til I make it on the Hot List!

I notice that there are many, many spiritually-oriented blogs here, but they very seldom get any notice. While it may be true that some people use their blogs to promote their own beliefs, not everyone does, and some of these bloggers can actually write very well. So I’m wondering…why is it that, say, Buddhist blogs, Sufi blogs such as my own Sufism-oriented blog or more existentially, philosophically or transpersonally-focused blogs don’t seem to get any notice? I live in the Bible Belt, and I can see the difficulties inherent in this situation, but as I said: some of these people can actually write, and do so for the sake of inspiration and the promotion of religious universalism, to say nothing of giving comfort and enlightenment. Surely these topics are at least as worthy of notice as beer-drinking, sex and football, not to mention politics? IS WordPress the “thinking person’s blog?”

The cats are biding their time before they pounce …

is there any similar for just all swedish users? would be great to have a flashback for other then english words. I just love stats!

It would indeed be neat to compare stats across languages. For now, though, we only present these figures on English tags.

Ok, too bad.

Simply brilliant! These stats are amazing. Love this understanding and meeting new folks every single day on WP!

While this particular post is meant to be on the lighter side, we feature great posts on topics like religion, philosophy, and many others over at Freshly Pressed, our editor’s picks showcase. We also frequently round up great blogs on focused topics on this blog, and your suggestions are noted — thanks for the feedback!

I love this theme, especially the navigation from post to post. Also love the way these bloggers have customized it.

I having using Sorbet since Valentine. Can’t seen to get tired with my Valentine background and matching logo. Love the vibrant colours of Sorbet.

I’m using Sorbet and I love it :) I don’t see myself switching to another theme anytime soon.

I’m also using this theme on my self hosted personal blog in gujarati language with some custom changes.

I too am using sorbet. Love the color options!

This should help alot.. :-)

Are wordpress blogs not hosted on wordpress.com/org eligible to be mentioned in the “Early theme adopters” section?

For now, at least, this series is focused on WordPress.com users.

Being new to WordPress, it can be difficult choosing which theme to select and I tried out a few before settling on Sorbet because of its clear, clean and bright appearance :)

This theme is definitely very cool, and we thought about switching to it for a while- the image icon/text icon specification was not ideal though. Overall the fun spring colors really let a blog with this theme stand out!

Hi Caroline,
I like them both and I’m tempted to break my budget and buy Sweet Life. It’s so lovely and has such nice fonts and features. Hmmmm …

Hemingway Rewritten is gorgeous! I’m tempted to give it a try, but I’ve been attempting to stick to one theme. (I’m currently using Zoren). I’d gotten in the habit of changing my theme about once a year. :)

They are beautiful, but the option to reply to comments is next to the title of post…not below the entry… :-(

I really NEED to know who is naming these themes. It’s kinda making me a little crazy. Hemingway Rewritten!!

Hemingway’s very nice. Like the big featured image for each post. Wish the font wasn’t not Calluna Sans and was something a bit more…literary, for the lack of a better word.

LOVE the new Hemingway Rewritten theme and have just activated it. It’s exactly what I have been looking for to showcase my photo blog. Beautiful layout with wonderful options for showcasing photo’s. Love the large format header, also. : )

Sweet Life looks gorgeous!

The size of the header is not completely right. It enlarged after uploading although I use the right pixels.

I have a request here. :) I really wish you would add themes with very very small headers like the header of the Mashable or Digital Trends website. I check in everytime when you add new themes and really wait for a theme with a minimal modern header like 40px or 50px height for example. I am not a big fan of huge headers as I think the content should stand ore out than the header. Hope you add some similar themes soon :)

Sweet Life looks a bit too over-the-top, but it’ll be interesting to see it when it’s been customised … ‘Hemingway Rewritten’? Priceless. Someone has a sense of humour!

It would be great if bloggers had the ability to change some of the format options such as font, columns, header colors, and where some things like comments go (think turning these elements into customizable plug-in elements). THIS would give WP great flexibility!

Will love to activate this awesome Hemingway Rewritten theme soon.

Thanks for your feedback! We’re always adding new themes, so hopefully you’ll see one that appeals soon.

Howdy! You can change many of these things, like fonts and colors, with the Custom Design upgrade: http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/

Howdy! It looks like you’re using a different theme now, but if you continue to experience problems with the header size, please don’t hesitate to post in the support forum: http://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/themes

Fantastic! Really glad you’re enjoying it. :)

I got great feedback on my switch to the new Suits theme. Now I’m seeing it everywhere! Schadenfreude.

Great post! Although, I admit, the reason I clicked on this is because of the awesome cappuccino picture.

Coming next week – Spring Cleaning your blog? Very interested and looking forward to reading that. Mine could use a good “once over” : )

Loved this weeks features. Especially photo blogging. Love WordPress!

Spring cleaning? I think I need more of a total makeover… I’m stuck at the ~ 200 views per day stage..

I’m sure there are many who’d be thrilled to be stuck at that stage with you!

Yes Rick, i’d like 200 views per day…lol

Ha, I didn’t think of if from that perspective while I’m busy toiling in the trenches…thanks for the reset!

Loved this post! However, the cappuccino did catch my attention! hahahah

Thanks WordPress.com!

Great coffee on a monday morning ( or any day of the week!) gets me every time!

I know its not Monday, but I sure could use a cup of coffee right now.

I like “tonal” but I’m concerned that it would get too monotone.

Please avoid black and white themes for now. We already many such in the Dashboard.

Tonal has so many different combinations depending on the background, hopefully you won’t get that feeling. If you do happen to get the custom colors upgrade you can create even more combinations:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/custom-colors/

They all look good but none of them look like that on my computer. setup was hard for a non computer guy and help was iffy at best.

Gridiculous Pro seems really really beautiful and easy to use, Well done!!!!

I’m sorry you’re having issues with themes – that’s no fun.

We do take on board any difficulties people have and try and improve things with each theme. Our goal is to make themes that work from the start for all.

If you are having issues, we do have help available on the forums for themes: http://premium-themes.forums.wordpress.com/. Each premium theme has its own forum so you can get the right help for what you are using.

Thanks for your suggestion, we do try and create a range so we’ll take it on board and look into getting some more colored themes released.

A lot of our themes allow backgrounds and background color changes, so you can change from the black and white default. Tonal actually changes the entire site depending on what you set for the background color – it can be any color you want.

Reblogged this on carolyncolemangrady.

I tried Tonal a couple of days ago and liked the color palette choices.It’s a very nice clean and minimalist theme but I dislike the Title font and the fact that Titles are all capitalized lettering. Otherwise I quite liked it and would be using it now.

I’m glad you liked the palettes and the style of Tonal. If you did happen to have the custom CSS upgrade you could modify the titles. That said, we’re keen to offer a wide range of themes and I’m sure we’ll have some without capitalised headers coming soon.

Hi again Tammie,
Thanks so much for your response but I don’t want to purchase another upgrade at this time. I set a $50 limit on blogging expenses for each blog per year and both of my blogs each have No-Ads upgrades and domain mapping upgrades. I’ll be keeping watch for more themes though.

Thanks for this Ben. It’s good to see all the news for the week in one post.
Dee

Thanks for this info!

I loved this photograph blog! Very good work! Congratulations!

Nice post.
Btw, Twenty Fourteen link is giving a page: “Oh dear! Something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it?”.

Thanks for letting us know — the link is now fixed.

It seems like my moka coffee… delicious!

Ah, I do love a good summary To the rest of the week we go, hearts full of blogging excitement!

Good news.

love both the themes but the second one is my favourite of the two

Both a great themes. I wish that Mayer was free.

We have more free themes coming soon!

Nice! Mayer reminds me a bit of Flato: http://wordpress.org/themes/flato

Wow, this looks great, especially like the Mayer Theme.

Mayer is a very long time coming – a blog theme that is totally devoted to the authors and writers among us; good job WordPress! With a few customizations, anyone who decides on choosing this one can have the blog of their dreams!

Axon is simplicity beautified, it just ‘works’. I love the silver shine slithers in the header and the overall minimalistic design; great for showing photographs like in the theme picture. I like it.

One thing I have noticed with many of the newer WordPress themes is that there is a lot of grey tones – why?

Anyway, two great new additions! Thank You

Axon is beautiful, but I’m getting a little over dosed on all the 90 degree angles and uber minimalistic themes. I’d love to see some new free themes with personality! Thanks for all the great work you do.

They look great, I wonder if I can give you guys suggestions on what free themes I’d love to see in WordPress.com someday…

By all means, send suggestions to themes[at]wordpress.com.

I love Axon’s design, nice & clean. Layout focus me to photos and content.

Sorbet is great! I’m thinking about changing theme…

These are really great!

Great Themes!

Awesome new themes!!! Thanks you guys for always providing us with Quality themes!

Reblogged this on woolhisers's Blog and commented:
Sorbet looks nice.

Yipee !!! A new day a new Hope !!!!

Oh – Sorbet is just gorgeous!! What beautiful work.

Oh my…why do you guys keep doing this? LOL… I just switched over to the twenty-fourteen theme for my mag blog and now, Outspoken is looking so tempting…hmm…to switch or not to switch?

Outspoken looks bright shiny and I am highly tempted!

I thank you guys for this beautiful job.

I agree that Sorbet really stands out, looking fresh and very “2014″. Certainly a #freemium theme, I’d say.

I’m in love with Studio. Very sleek +_+

Might get Sorbet.

Sorbet has (almost!) everything I was looking for in a theme, thank you ever so much! Very beautiful!

Fantastic themes! I would like to see a free theme like Studio.

Studio is stunning with endless possibilities. Yay!

Studio looks really nice.