# Marginalia: free WordPress theme URL: https://symelo.com/tools/wordpress-themes/marginalia Free WordPress theme. A playful portfolio theme for illustrators, comic artists and picture-book makers: hand-drawn doodles, stickers, tilted polaroid cards and a masonry wall of your work. A playful portfolio theme for illustrators, comic artists and picture-book makers: hand-drawn doodles, stickers, tilted polaroid cards and a masonry wall of your work. - Price: free (GPLv2 or later) - Category: Portfolio - Version 1.0.0, 2026-10-22. WordPress 7.0+, PHP 7.4+. GNU General Public License v2 or later. - Style variations: Ink, Risograph, Sunday - Fonts: Figtree, Fraunces, Caveat, System mono - Works with: [Secure Custom Fields](https://wordpress.org/plugins/secure-custom-fields/), a free plugin by WordPress.org, optional ## Description Marginalia is a portfolio for people who draw. Cream paper, soft and wonky Fraunces headlines, handwritten notes in Caveat, doodled arrows and stars, sticker badges and project cards that sit slightly crooked on a masonry wall until you point at them. The work is the color. It is built on the Symelo portfolio foundation, so projects are a real content type with their own fields, and everything below works without a page builder: * **Projects**: a Projects menu with disciplines and industries, client, year, role, duration, location, tools, a shop link, a summary, galleries in four layouts, a before/after slider, the challenge / approach / outcome of the case study, results, credits, a client quote, a map and the next project. Values are edited with the free Secure Custom Fields plugin (the theme offers to install it) and keep showing without it. * **A masonry wall**: project grids lay out as polaroids with tape and numbered stickers, in varying heights, straightening up on hover. * **Filterable work**: discipline chips drawn as wobbly pills, search and sort; the grid updates without a reload, keeps the address shareable and works without JavaScript. * **Commissions**: an availability sticker in the header and hero, a "Open for commissions" band with three steps, an inquiry form that fills in the project a visitor came from, and a Shop prints call to action. * **Handwritten details**: section notes, gallery captions and numbers are set in Caveat; doodles are inline SVG in your colors, so they follow every style variation and the dark scheme. * **Galleries**: Masonry and Carousel gallery styles and a lightbox with captions, swipe and keyboard support. * **Motion**: gentle floating stickers, a wiggle on hover and staggered reveals; all of it off for visitors who prefer reduced motion. * **Light and dark**: a switch in the header that remembers the visitor's choice, and three style variations: Ink (dark), Risograph (fluo pink and blue on warm print paper) and Sunday (sunflower yellow), each with its own night or day partner. Templates: blog home, single post, page, archive, search (projects, posts and pages together), 404, the project page, the projects archive, discipline and industry archives, plus the custom templates Landing page, Wide and Case study. Template parts: header, header over a hero image, footer and a minimal footer. About fifty patterns: three heroes (a collage of polaroids, your name with handwritten notes, and a masonry wall with a floating introduction), a sticker ticker, selected work, the project index, the filterable grid, services, process, the studio in numbers, clients, awards, speech-bubble testimonials, questions, galleries, forms, journal lists, the commission band, the print shop and full pages for Home, Work, About and Contact. The demo content (Appearance → Import demo) installs a complete portfolio with nine projects, disciplines, industries, clients, awards and the Home, Work, About and Contact pages. ## Frequently Asked Questions #### Where do I add projects and studio details? Projects have their own menu (Projects → Add Project); the project details are below the editor. Your availability, email, phone, address, clients and awards are under Projects → Studio details. Both need the free Secure Custom Fields plugin, which the theme offers to install in one click. Without it, everything already entered keeps showing. #### Where do form submissions go? Every inquiry, message, collaboration request and newsletter signup is saved under **Messages** in the dashboard and emailed to the site's administration email address. To send them somewhere else, open Messages → Settings and enter one or more recipients, or select a form block and set its own recipients in the block settings. Make sure your site can send email (most hosts need an SMTP plugin or service for reliable delivery). #### How does the hover preview of the project index work? On a computer with a mouse, the cover image of the row under the pointer follows it. It uses the project's featured image ("Cover image"). On phones and tablets the image shows as a small thumbnail at the start of each row, and keyboard users see it beside the focused row. #### How do I add a featured video to a project or a post? In the editor, open the document settings and find the **Featured video** panel. Paste a YouTube or Vimeo link, or choose a video file from the media library. The project page shows it edge to edge in place of the cover image. #### Can I turn the animations off? They switch off automatically for visitors who ask their device for reduced motion. To remove an animation from a block, select it and clear the effect in the **Motion** panel (or remove the `sk-…` class under Advanced → Additional CSS classes). #### How does dark mode work? The moon / sun button in the header switches between a light and a dark palette and remembers the choice in the visitor's browser. Every style variation has its own partner: the default Cream and Ink swap with each other, Risograph has a deep plum night and Sunday a dark brown. Pick the variation in Appearance → Editor → Styles. #### Why does the page title sometimes not appear? The page template leaves out the title when the page opens with its own hero (a heading, a cover or one of the hero and full-page patterns), so it never appears twice. Use the Landing page template to leave it out everywhere. ## Downloads - [Marginalia 1.0.0](https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/marginalia/1.0.0/marginalia-1.0.0.zip) (2026-10-22, 2.1 MB, SHA-256 b5f923fbfd555677846254597ead1857e63852e5d73957e06b8ffa7e8661bb64) ## Screenshots - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/marginalia/shots/home-ad5f245250.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/marginalia/shots/contact-2-8d4d798cc5.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/marginalia/shots/projects-0b493c0395.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/marginalia/shots/projects-fieldnotes-app-d0f3db9efc.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/marginalia/shots/studio-7b8b502a37.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/marginalia/shots/work-b74d19105c.webp - https://symelo.com/wordpress-themes/marginalia/shots/admin-fields-976ed66f0f.webp - [All WordPress themes](https://symelo.com/tools/wordpress-themes) ## Related pages - [All tools](https://symelo.com/tools) - [Agent documentation](https://symelo.com/llms.txt)