Ghost Themes: Designing for Simplicity

Ghost is a brand new blog engine, built on Node.js, and designed for simplicty. The great thing about both hosted and host-your-own blogs is the ability to theme it, give it your own style. Ghost is a whole new paradigm, though.

It's simplicity of design starts from the writing process - a simple markdown + preview editor, that makes writing painless and quick, but extends all the way to the reader, on any device. So how do you insert your own style, your own design, into something so simple?

There are no sidebars to color, no tag clouds to position, no fluff. It's delivery is all in what's most important: beautiful content.

There it is: beautiful content. How can we take something simple, and make it beautiful?

I'm a developer; a programmer, and although there is much debate on whether programmers can be good designers, I know that there are elements of the design process and creation which I lack. However, I can appreciate them, and I can thoroughly enjoy implementing beautiful, functional, and creative designs.

I want to delve into the world of design starting with this new blog engine, designed for simplicity. I might need some help, but it should be fun.

There are no doubt hundreds (probably thousands) of developers already hungry to get a piece of the Ghost-Theme pie (hell, there's already a company doing it), but there's reputation and experience to be gained by open sourcing these on github or dribble. Who knows, if I we come up with something cool, maybe we could sell it.