Arliss is the creation of Blurbia – a new and exciting team of Web Developers: Tyler Schick and Jeff Smith. If you’re looking for a fresh look for your blog – Arliss is the theme for you. Its’ semi-magazine / semi-blog style, combined with dazzling color schemes, subtle effects and a surplus of functionality – this theme will sure entice your web senses. Let’s explore Arliss:

Home page

I may not need to mention how effective the post rotator in the home page is. This component alone drives the quality of this theme. The timed automatic rotation, the thumbnail highlight, the transparent post details container – everything about this little slideshow is enough to allure the average viewer. The “hop up” effect for the page navigation is very unique – where the child pages are shown directly underneath the parent pages.

The lower container directly below the rotator is worth a mention. This houses the rest of your recent posts, complete with pagination which allows you to view the entire list without having to leave the home page. Category drop down lists as well as a separate container showing categorized posts in a horizontal fashion – just to add variance to the layout.

Inner pages

Archive and category pages span beautifully with excellent placement of post thumbnails and “etched” border separators. Again you see the category drop-down list just in case you want the sudden jump to another category. The single post page is as expected – proper styles for image and text alignment (although I would’ve liked to see an added line-height for the content area.) What I really liked is the response form – where it initially just shows a single field; once clicked – the rest of the required fields shows itself.

Comments are threaded with Gravatars. Sidebar has the necessities: search form, advertising blocks – matching styles for widget additions.

Overall

I love the colored “twilight” background they used with Arliss. It has just the right gradiation and color combination that ties well to the overall schema. You might be thinking that the bright neon pink used for the post titles, links, hover actions as well as the footer to be a little too daring. I feel that the pink works. Squint your eyes a little bit and try to absorb – you will notice that it compliments the whole design. I also think this kind of fluorescent color combination will widespread in the web even more. I also like the sharp clean edges, faint fades and flat background elements. Overall – Arliss is a good model of creative design that I’m sure we’ll see more of in the future.

Arliss sells for $100 single use and $300 developers.