Blogger Theme Zenburn

What is Zenburn?

The Zenburn theme idea was created by Jani Nurminen to combat the eye-straining colors of the Vim editor. Jani is a programmer/designer from Finland who still tweaks the Zenburn look on occasion and released the color scheme design to Cream , which is a free test editor software package for download.

The main design theme through the Zenburn look is to be as low contrast as possible. Less strain on the eye when working for long periods in front of the screen is the motivation. Even though the contrast is low, the user still needs to be able to see different types of text on the screen.

Since the popularity of the Zenburn color scheme exploded on to the Internet, there have been many themes and skins developed that follow along the same lines as Jani’s original creation. Here though, we are going to focus solely on the blogger theme Zenburn and show you how to apply it to you own blog.

For other themes that can be used in Google’s Blogger, check out Top Free Blogger Layouts and Creating a Blogger Template.

Zenburn for Blogger

There is one thing to keep in mind when looking to use the blogger theme Zenburn and that is the majority of users who have created the theme for blogging are professional design developers and programmers. This means that in order to set up this theme for your blog it will be easier to do if you are familiar with coding. In the image at the left, you can see an example of the color scheme used as the basis for the Zenburn theme. Click on the image to get a better view.

One Google Blogger user, Elijhar who is a software engineer from Chicago has used the Zenburn theme for Vim and translated the color scheme into other areas of his computer usage. He has also shared through his blog how the creation of this theme can be adapted to the blogger system. The blogger theme Zenburn code is available online at: Zenburn Blogger Template with Syntax Highlighting for Code Examples You will have to visit the link in order to see an example of the color scheme.

For those who are not familiar with coding, there are a few alternatives when it comes to having a blog with a blogger theme Zenburn look to

it. The image to the right, shows the free template called Carbon 12 that can be downloaded through BTemplates.com. Click on the image to get a larger view. Notice that the main overall look to this theme is a low contrast, monochromatic style and it’s that design that makes looking at the blog easier on the eyes. Other templates that come close to the Zenburn look are Steampunk, Tech World, Darkly, Grey Magic and ZDark which can all be found when the titles are typed into the search bar at the BTemplates main site.

*images used were created by the author using Picnik for Zenburn colors example and Carbon 12 image was provided by BTemplates.