Field Notes
A night-time field journal: serif entries, mono annotations, graph paper and pine.
Field Notes treats a blog like a researcher's notebook kept after dark. Entries are set in Newsreader, while dates, tags, buttons and captions use IBM Plex Mono. The palette is night blue-black, pine and sage, every photograph is toned to a muted green duotone, and the home page ends on a ruled log of your five most recent entries, printed over a faint grid.
Who it's for
It was drawn for people who record what they see outdoors: naturalists, birders, amateur astronomers, field biologists and nature writers who publish dated observations rather than quick takes. Science communicators and researchers keeping a public lab or expedition diary will feel at home too. If you sell guides, charts or kit, the shop keeps the same dark plates and green-toned pictures. It is the wrong choice for a bright, colourful brand, because every image is tinted green and the page never turns light.
What makes it different
A hero built around a captioned figure
The home page splits in two: a mono kicker, a serif headline, your site description in italics and three small meta lines on one side, and a figure with corner registration marks and a two-part caption on the other. The plate uses your hero image, or the newest post's picture when none is set.
Optional night footage, poster first
Add a clip in the Scroll journey field under Settings, General, Hero media, and Field Notes plays it muted and looping over the poster. Leave it empty and the still poster is the whole design. Visitors whose system asks for reduced motion never see the clip; they get the poster instead.
An observation log on graph paper
Below three cards of latest dispatches, a pine band ruled with a fine grid lists your five most recent posts as a table. Each row reads date, location, observation and series: the title is the observation, the first tag becomes the series and the second tag, or your site name, fills the location column.
Entries laid out like a notebook page
Posts sit in a 65-character text column with a narrow margin beside it for an annotation. A tag eyebrow, serif title, italic excerpt and a byline with an initials ring lead into the duotone cover, tag pills and comments. A gridded Dispatch signup box closes the entry when subscribing is set up and switched on.
A shop on the same dark plates
The listing opens with an item count above the headline, then category pills and a three-column grid. Each card shows a category badge, the title, a line of description, the price and a second image on hover. Products without options also get an add-to-cart button once a payment method is connected.
Product pages with a specimen tag
A product opens on a large plate with registration marks, a figure caption and up to four thumbnails. Beside it come a breadcrumb with a short SKU taken from the product id, the italic description, an add-to-cart button, a Buy now button when Stripe is connected, and the feature list printed in a gridded specimen box.
Page by page
- Home
- Split hero with a captioned figure, three latest dispatches, the graph-paper observation log and a letterhead footer.
- Blog
- Journal masthead, up to six category pills plus All, a three-column card grid and numbered pages.
- Post
- Text column with a margin note, byline, duotone cover, tags, comments and the Dispatch box when signup is on.
- Page
- Colophon eyebrow, serif title and a prose column with a Dispatch note in the margin.
- Shop
- Item count, category pills and a card grid with hover images.
- Product
- Gallery plate with thumbnails, breadcrumb, buy buttons and a specimen-tag feature box.
Customizing it
With Global Design applied to the theme, your background, text, primary and accent colours replace the night palette, and your secondary colour sets the dimmer supporting text. The filled buttons take your text colour, so keep it light. A heading font you choose replaces Newsreader across headings and body copy, falling back to your body font. Twenty-three pieces of sample wording, from the hero kicker to the footer coordinates, can be rewritten in English and Arabic under Settings, General, Theme copy.
Honest limits
- Dark only. The stylesheet has no light palette and does not respond to a visitor's system colour preference.
- Some colours ignore Global Design: the hairline rules and grid lines, the graph-paper panels, card and footer backgrounds and the faintest grey text are fixed, and IBM Plex Mono stays the annotation font whatever fonts you choose.
- Until you rewrite it, the sample copy speaks for a fictional night-observation journal, including invented coordinates and a Field Notes Press copyright line. The footer's four Field Kit links all point to the shop, and they appear even on a site that sells nothing.
- In the observation log, the Figure column always shows a dash, and the location column shows a post's second tag, or your site name when there is none.
- There is no search box on the blog or in the shop, and the shop has no price or stock filters. For products with options, the standard option picker sits below the product panel rather than beside the buy buttons.
- A few shop and product labels are fixed English, including VIEW ITEM, BUY NOW and the note shown when payments are not configured.
Specifications
- Category
- Animation
- Price
- Included
- Plan availability
- Included in every VeloCMS plan
- Commerce-ready
- Yes
- Motion
- Yes
Good fit for
Frequently asked questions
Can I replace the night-sky sample text?
Yes. Field Notes registers twenty-three wording slots, such as the hero kicker, the figure caption, the observation log heading, the footer tagline and the coordinates. Edit them under Settings, General, Theme copy in English and Arabic; an empty field keeps the original wording.
Does Field Notes need a video in the hero?
No. The hero is complete with a still poster, taken from your hero image or your newest post. A video only plays if you add its address, and it is hidden for visitors who prefer reduced motion.
Is there a light version?
No. Field Notes is a dark design with one palette. You can change its main colours through Global Design, but there is no light mode or automatic switch.
Can my menu have sub-items?
Yes. When a top-level link has children, the desktop bar shows it as a dropdown and the mobile drawer lists the children indented beneath it. A site with no menu of its own gets default links, and both the home and blog links are labelled Journal.
Can I sell things with Field Notes?
Yes. It has its own shop listing and product page, with category pills, hover images, add-to-cart buttons, a Buy now button when Stripe is connected and a specimen-style box for product features.