Once in a while I browse through premium themes and get excited about what I’m looking at. What catches my eye is the creativity that’s poured in to the theme, which is the whole point. A premium theme’s success may depend on two things – it’s out of the box – ready to go, or if it needs just a little tweaking and customizing – then it’s ready to go. I guess that just boils down to one – “if it’s ready to go”. This is the case of Urban Elements by Press75. Just take a look at this puppy – it reminds me of a modern wall painting of some sort. Very random – but yet organized, arbitrary – yet elements blend well, monotone – yet powerful: just a few descriptive words that pop in my head. The most important thing about Urban Elements – is that it’s READY TO GO!

Color schema

The designers of Urban Elements stuck to a base of grayscales and hints of dark brown. One may initially think that may be a tad boring, but no – I think it brings out that “urban” essence even more. One advantage of having such a “monotone” skin – it highlights the pictures you embed in your posts even more. Notice how the pictures stick out from the rest of the page

Details, details and more details

This is the part where I critique the stuff some people may not see. For Urban Elements – there may be many, since it contains a lot of delicate graphic details that may be easy to miss. First off, is the hover effect in the photos – they get this “shadowy” bezel. It’s very subtle – yet effective. Of course the rounded aluminum borders surrounding the photos is a nice touch as well. The same border style is used in the comments template for the Gravatars.

The entry dates – the month is for sure in text format, but the days have this “etched” look that certainly can’t be achieved by text format. In addition, it looks like it’s tucked inside the page like it was underneath. The same effect goes for the footer credit section.
The main navigation is presented in a semi-transparent background with a fading border as separators. The categories link is merged along with the pages; the categories and sub—categories are listed in a multi-level drop-down menu when hovered. Immediately to the right is a custom search form, again with transparent and fading borders along with a gradient “go” for a button. As an added accentuation, a hand drawn RSS subscribe icon completes the main navigation for Urban Elements.

Additional hand drawn icons are also part of the sidebar links. The sidebar also has a semi-transparent background with a “tucked underneath” effect from the main area. This approach works hand in hand with the navigation – where the overall output is to get the readers to focus in the main content area (the only part with an opaque, white background).

The Possibilities

One will not need to change much to transform this theme into their own. All you need is to slap on another powerful background art and voila! All the elements can stay intact. The transparencies, hand drawn elements, borders, shades – will all complement whichever background you choose. Here’s an idea – with a little CSS knowledge you can change all the “a” tags into a sharper accent – maybe match with a logo, a strong burgundy of some sort. Note to readers: for anyone that’s purchased and customized this theme – please post your link in the comments. I would love to follow how far this theme will go.

What I would like to see

Even though I fully glorify this theme, I would like to see a couple more things added. First is a better archive template. The idea for an archive template is to see excerpted entries usually not displaying the entire post. Although this concept is used in Urban Elements – it looks almost the same as the index page. I would like to see maybe smaller thumbnails for the archives and search results pages. Maybe a feature post section – I know this maybe asking for too much. But usually in a premium theme, readers are drawn to “features”.

Conclusion

Overall, Urban Elements is a brilliant theme that I am sure will be seen throughout the web. It has this grungy style that many people look for. It posses the quality of a true designer’s art work with distinct features that separate it from the rest.

Other theme options include Site Header Customization, In line Advertisement Management, Sidebar Advertisement Management, Social Link Configuration, Google Analytics Configuration and Post Thumbnail options. Urban Elements sells $75.00 single use. Press75 also offer an unlimited Theme Package for $275.