HI25
For thoughtful creatives. The 2025 edition of a yearly series of personal blog themes by Henrique Iamarino, a theme designer at Automattic. A bold editorial header, a full-screen menu with room for a portrait and a few words about you, and eight accent palettes to make it yours.
HI25 is a free WordPress block theme for people who write, read and make things. The header puts your portrait, your name and your categories right up front. The menu opens into a full-screen overlay where readers meet you before they pick a page. Throughout the site, different Query Loop layouts give each kind of writing its own stage, from long essays to book notes to the work you want to show.
→ See it live: hi2025.mystagingwebsite.com
→ Get it: GitHub · WordPress.org, coming soon
One theme a year
HI25 is the first edition of a series. Every year I design a theme for my own site, live with it, write with it, and refine it in public. Then I turn it into a free theme for everyone and publish it on WordPress.org. HI25 was designed in 2025 and launched in 2026. The next edition is already on its way.
Each edition keeps a few things from the last and leaves the rest behind, so the series becomes a record of how my work and my writing change from one year to the next.
Features
- An editorial header: Your portrait, the site title, a tagline and a "Read by Category" menu, upfront, to pull readers straight into the writing.
- A full-screen menu overlay: The menu at display size, a short introduction, and a portrait with a gentle tilt that comes alive every few seconds. It stays still for readers who prefer reduced motion.
- Eight accent palettes: Orange, yellow, pink, blue, golden, purple, green and teal, each one a style variation with its own matching duotone for images.
- Many Query Loop layouts: A featured latest post, a row of recent writing and a Most Read section built from your sticky posts.
- Templates for different kinds of writing: Book Review and Theme Showcase for posts, and a full-width template for pages.
- Patterns to start from: Readings, Readings with Covers and Specials, ready in the block inserter.
- One typeface, done right: Manrope under the Open Font License, and nothing else to load.
- Lightweight & clean: Styles driven by
theme.json, no custom JavaScript, no page builders.
- Built for every screen and every language: Responsive from the ground up and ready for translation.
Eight palettes, one character
HI25 keeps its structure in near-black and white and lets one accent color set the mood. Pick a palette under Appearance → Editor → Styles: buttons, links, highlights and the duotone on your images all follow it, so the whole site changes character in one click while keeping its bones.
Meet the reader before the menu
Open the menu and the page gives way to a full-screen overlay: your pages on one side, a few words about you in the middle, and your portrait on the other. It is a small detail that makes a personal site feel personal.
Patterns to start from
Three patterns wait in the block inserter, ready to drop into any page:
- Readings: four book covers in a row, each with its title and author below.
- Readings with Covers: the same shelf, with the title and author set on the cover.
- Specials: one featured post and a row of four, under a title of your choice.
Built for any device
Single-column on the phone, multi-column on the desktop, and the editorial feel intact at every width.
A closer look
| Overview | Reading & topics | Single post |
|---|
| | |
| Query Loops, patterns, and parts | Categories and topics, upfront | Optimized for long-form reading |
Requirements
- WordPress 7.0 or later
- PHP 7.4 or later
Installation
- Download the latest version (or clone the repository).
- Copy the
hi25 folder into wp-content/themes/.
- Activate it under Appearance → Themes.
You can also install the ZIP directly from Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme → Upload Theme. Once HI25 is approved on WordPress.org, you will find it right in your dashboard under Add New Theme.
Credits
- Typeface: Manrope by the Manrope Project Authors, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
- Marbled papers used as book covers: public domain images from rawpixel, under CC0.
- Footer and portrait photograph: by the theme author, under CC0.
License
HI25 is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. See LICENSE for the full text.
About the author
I'm Henrique Iamarino, Henri for short, a theme designer building WordPress at Automattic, based in Milan. I write about books, Stoicism, culture and the themes I design at iamarino.com.
