Figure/Ground

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Figure/Ground is a bold blogging theme that transforms your site into a dynamic, visually stimulating canvas of abstract shapes and content.

Figure/Ground WordPress theme screenshot featuring the default black and cream tiled rhombus background graphic and an angular building rendering.

The word dynamic refers not only to this theme’s visual design but also to its full-screen background animation. Meticulously designed on a responsive 64-pixel square grid with a 16-pixel sub-grid, Figure/Ground features comprehensive customization options including the ability to customize every color and alternate “Orthogonal” and “Circular” modes that switch things up. Your content flows down the center of the page, blending into the background animation in an alternating sequence, before coming to the widgetized footer. A fixed header features space for a small site icon, a search bar, and a togglable menu. From its bold design to its out-of-the-box functionality and easy customization, Figure/Ground is sure to make your site memorable!

Theme Options/Features

The following options are available for this theme, via the Customizer:

  • Two Figure/Ground Color pickers.
  • Two Accent Color pickers.
  • Option for orthogonal or circular design details and animation.
  • Size of the figure/ground animation shapes.
  • Speed of the figure/ground animation, or turn the animation off.
  • Number of animation iterations to perform on page-load.
  • Custom copyright name field.
  • Show or hide “Proudly powered by WordPress”.
  • Show or hide theme information display.
  • One menu location, which supports items one level deep.
  • A social menu with icons for social links.
  • One widget location, in the footer, which displays in one, two, or three columns depending on the screen width.

The following features are also available:

  • Featured images.
  • Post formats: aside, image, gallery, video, audio, quote, and link formats get special treatment and big icons.
  • Custom styling for galleries, audio and video players, and playlists, which are also included in the editor styles.
  • Images get special treatment and really stand out in the highly abstract, artistic design of Figure/Ground. Accordingly, featured images and single-view image pages display large images without unnecessary padding or other chrome.
  • Abundant iconography (via Genericons), in post meta, post formats, archive page headers, and more.
  • Wide and full-width image support with the block editor.
  • Block editor style support, with custom styles for several elements in the editor and on the front end.

Screenshots

Figure/Ground theme screenshot showing a photograph of the 2014 USC Concrete Canoe Team and the text "Concrete Canoe: DiSCovery II".
Rectangular mode with default colors & settings, with featured image and link post format.
Figure/Ground theme screenshot showing a blocky horizontal pattern with blocks of text content.
Static page view with a brown color scheme and striped settings for the animation.
Figure/Ground theme screenshot with an abstract layered circle background and circular images.
Circular mode, with blue and white colors, on an archive page and showing a gallery post.
Figure/Ground theme screenshot showing a photograph of a cherry tree full of red fruits with the ext "Loaded Cherry Tree".
Green and black colors, circular mode, and menu toggled open on a single-image page.
Figure/Ground theme screenshot showing pink and red colors with a small circular pattern.
Red and white colors in circular mode with a smaller max circle size, in comments.
Figure/Ground screenshot showing a grid-like pattern of gray and lime green colors.
Single post view with comments with green and gray colors and a small grid animation size.

Download

Figure/Ground is available on the WordPress.org theme repository.

Installation

  1. Take the easy route and install through the WordPress Theme Installer OR
  2. Download the .zip file and upload the unzipped folder to the /wp-content/themes/ directory.
  3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Themes’ screen in WordPress.
  4. Go to the Customizer (Appearance -> Customize) to select custom colors, Figure/Ground animation settings, and to customize the standard options, ranging from widgets to menus and a custom header.

Frequently Asked Questions

SUPPORTED COLORS

It is extremely important that your two selected Figure/Ground colors have adequate contrast with each other, as they are alternately used as the foreground and background colors throughout this theme. But don’t worry about looking up how to calculate color contrast. Figure/Ground automatically ensures that the bare minimum color contrast guidelines are met, and will adjust your color selections as needed to do so. If you find that the resulting color is significantly different from the one you selected, it’s best to find the perfect shade within the general brightness of the generated color. Additionally, contrast between accent colors and their respective figure/ground colors is checked and tweaked as needed.

Changelog

1.3
  • Implement accessibility improvements throughout the theme. Figure/Ground is now accessibility-ready.
  • Add a new, default, “Rhombus” mode for the figure/ground animation. Adjust defaults and update customizer options accordingly.
  • Add styles for the new editor blocks in WordPress 5.0, fixing broken styles for core backwards compatibility breaks.
  • Add editor styles for the block editor.
  • Add support for the wide and full image alignments in the block editor.
  • Apply custom colors to the block editor color palates.
  • Customize styling of site embeds externally to match theme styling.
  • Add support for the footer privacy policy link.
  • Fix styling for media elements in widgets.
  • Improve menu toggle button interactions.
  • Replace custom header image functionality with the custom logo feature, which is more consistent with this theme’s design intent.
1.2
  • Add support for visible edit shortcuts in the customizer for site title and tagline and footer options by adding support for Selective Refresh in addition to instant JS-based previewing.
  • Add support for starter content in the customizer for fresh sites, with WordPress 4.7.
  • Fix checkbox sanitization in the customizer.
1.1
  • All options in the customizer are now instantly live-previewed with postMessage.
  • Add support for selective refresh in the customizer for widgets, and generated colors.
  • Redraw the background canvas when the page is resized to avoid pixelization.
  • Add a social menu option.
  • Improve keyboard navigation (although this still needs additional work).
  • Update Genericons to version 3.4.1.
1.0.1
  • Initial public release.

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