Revolution Office is a theme by Brian Gardner. Brian Gardner is the creator of the popular Revolution series which recently went open source. His recreation of Revolution 2 – which feature a more overall general purpose styled themes, is clearly on its way to great recognition. In this case – Revolution Office, a clean multi-column layout theme with “non-traditional” elements that is sure to fit you professional website the makeover it needs. Non-traditional – as in unique; that is, if used right – can convert your Wordpress blog looking like its custom built from scratch. Which is a good thing – right?

The Home Page

Beautifully laid out, the home page’s aim is to present combinations of posts into a three column wonder that seems like it was hand coded into the page itself. It introduces a big content slider right in the center of the page with single images. Images that when hovered – a brief description is displayed right beside your cursor. That’s right – they’re individual posts. When clicked – goes into the post detail page. The housing for the slider is a beautiful container with white borders and rounded corners. The previous and next buttons are done brilliantly as well. Right below the content slider are additional columns of introductory text. Again these are posts that are designated to show in this template page. A rounded container which includes additional posts is found right above the footer – completes the layout of the entire page. Like mentioned – this is not your traditional blog page at all.

The Inner Pages

Note that the navigation supports multi-level for child categories and pages. The inner pages also contain bread crumb styled navigation. Bread crumbs provide a “trail-like” structure of the current page you’re in. This approach is seldom seen in blogs. In Revolution Office it is used to present the full path: from entry point – to the post title. Also worth mentioning are the styling for the Block quote elements and List Items. These are built in to the theme – that when you decide to use it inside a post or a page, will apply the same consistent look for the entire site.

Another thing that I noticed is that the inner pages switches to a different “body” background style. The dark green bar which surrounded the content slider in the home page changes to a slimmer bar which encloses the bread crumb navigation in the inner pages. This is a big deal for designers and is pretty difficult to achieve.

The archive sections – pages that show excerpts of posts in a dedicated category is a simple two-column layout with the optional thumbnails of individual posts. The results are presented in invisible blocked compartments which are evenly spaced vertically and horizontally. Regards to white space and use of grid technology is good indication of expert design. The same goes for the search result pages. Note that the “next” and “previous” navigation is mysteriously found in the footer area.

Revolution Office is sold for $59.95 single use. Revolution 2 also offer a “Pro-plus” All-theme package which includes unlimited theme support, tutorials and other design services for $149.95.