WordPress Announces 10 Style Variation Selections for Twenty Twenty-Three Theme

WordPress’ design team has announced the winners of the challenge to create a style variation for the upcoming Twenty Twenty-Three (TT3) default theme. Organizers received 38 submissions from 19 contributors (some submitted multiple variations) hailing from eight countries.

Given the wide range of colors and typography combinations, TT3 is gearing up to be a vehicle for a diverse set of styles from WordPress’ community of designers. Submissions included creative variations for all kinds of design moods – dark with high contrast, bright yellow with a smaller universal type size, a gradient aubergine background, and many more.

Automattic design director Channing Ritter published the selections that made the cut to be shipped with Twenty Twenty-Three:

“These variations were selected in an effort to feature the most drastically different set of variations possible — so in many ways, we were looking at what would work best as a collection versus selecting our favorite standalone submissions,” Ritter said.

The selections are not in their final form. Contributors will continue iterating on them, under the direction of design team leaders, until the WordPress 6.1 beta period begins on September 20.

“Some of the changes suggested may be a bit aspirational, but let’s continue pushing to see how opinionated we can make each of these variations,” Ritter said.

Submissions that were not chosen to ship with TT3 may still have a path towards inclusion via an official child theme of the default theme. Contributors discussed how this might work and have closed the issue in favor of creating a separate project for it after TT3 has launched.

“I particularly like the idea of continuing to create style variations beyond those that are bundled with TT3,” Automattic-sponsored contributor Sarah Norris said. “I think this is a great opportunity to introduce people to block themes and building variations, with the help of the community and experienced block-themers. It also provides a space to test Gutenberg PRs, in a similar way to how emptytheme is currently used, but with more opinionated settings enabled.

“I’m not sure about this being part of the current TT3 project, and in my opinion, it would be best to start this initiative soon after TT3 has launched.”

In the meantime, contributors plan to refine the selected variations, and the child theme project can proceed without affecting the theme’s current timeline.

Check out the announcement to see each of the selected variations in more detail.