If you’re not exactly sure what a tumblelog is, then check out What is a Tumblr? for a bit of background. But just because it’s a random sequence of thoughts doesn’t mean your tumblelog needs to look like random trash. Here are the top 10 designs and themes that I’ve s(tumbled) across in the past few weeks:
http://tumbl.us is a tumblelog by Matt McInvery who also maintains a design portfolio and blog at pixelspread
http://mindsink.watchtheworld.org is the tumblelog of Angad Kingra who maintains his blog and photoblog at watchtheworld
http://cameron.io Cameron Hunt is the designer of some of the built in (and best) themes available for tumblr. The themes are available on his project page
http://juhaliza.tumblr.comUpdate: http://www.hammarman.com/ also titled Moose Garden is the work and nonsense from Johan Hammarman
http://paulgiacherio.tumblr.com is the tumblelog of Paul Giacherio
http://gondaba.com has a clever use of a dynamically changing color palette that alters the background styles of the layout.
http://sid05.tumblr.com aka Digital{wood}Moleskin has a nice effect of transparent color panels over a timber background. (Hint: If you’re wondering how they got a floating transparent style, I believe they used ‘png’ graphics with set transparency)
http://dayvan.tumblr.com is the demonstration tumblelog of the Dayvan Mini theme. It’s a very simple, sleek and minimal theme by nostrich, who tumbles at numblr and read this post to get the theme / code.
http://easyreader.tumblr.com is again a very clean and simple layout and is “…a Tumblr theme designed to make it easy for people to read your writing”. It is designed by Bill Israel who tumbles here and has also designed many of the themes which are built into tumblr.com
http://www.ziked.com is a design that is more in the scrap booking, notebook style. Designed by Mirza Rahman. Thanks to Concerned Netizen for pointing out that Ziked is not a totally original design. Elements have been taken (with permission I believe) from ndesign-studio.com who also have some great tutorials on how to create these effects. See Design Watercolor Effect Menu. This means the number 10 spot is up for grabs to the next best suggested tumblr site.
For an ever growing list of themes you can check out http://tumblepedia.net/themes/list or just tumblepedia.net in general for a wiki on tumblelog information.
If you’ve tumbled over some nice designed tumblr sites be sure to let me know.
