Artist Theme is a free Jekyll theme that provides a ready-made static website structure with a Gulp-driven build workflow. It relies on Jekyll for content management, Sass for stylesheets, and Jade (later renamed Pug) for HTML templating, making it a specific choice for developers who prefer this toolchain.
What is Artist Theme?
Artist Theme is a free theme for Jekyll, the Ruby-based static site generator. As a theme, it supplies the layouts, includes, and configuration that turn Markdown or Liquid content into a static website. The theme's repository description simply says "A free Jekyll theme," and it has earned 91 stars, indicating community interest. The core dependencies listed are Jekyll, Gulp, Sass, and Jade.
Key Features
- Jekyll foundation — the theme is structured as a standard Jekyll theme, so it works with Jekyll's conventions for posts, pages, collections, and front matter.
- Gulp build system — instead of relying solely on Jekyll's built-in asset pipeline, the theme uses Gulp to automate tasks such as Sass compilation, Jade template rendering, and live reload during development.
- Sass preprocessed styles — all styling is written in Sass, allowing use of variables, mixins, and nesting that compile to plain CSS.
- Jade/Pug templating — the theme generates HTML through Jade (now Pug), a concise template language that compiles to HTML.
- Free of cost — the theme is explicitly free, with no mention of a paid tier or license purchase required.
Who is it for?
- Jekyll developers — who want a theme that already includes a Gulp-based asset pipeline, saving time on build tooling setup.
- Developers comfortable with Sass and Jade/Pug — the theme's template and style files are written in these languages, so familiarity is helpful for customization.
- Creatives and hobbyists — given the name "Artist," the theme may appeal to artists and designers seeking a personal portfolio site, though the repository does not specify any particular niche.
What can you do with it?
- Launch a static site quickly — clone or download the theme, add your Markdown content, and run Gulp to generate a static site.
- Customize the visual style — because styles are in Sass, you can change variables and mixins to alter colors, fonts, and layout without touching compiled CSS.
- Build a portfolio or blog — as a Jekyll theme, it supports Jekyll's blogging features like posts and pagination, making it suitable for personal websites.
