A bold creative agency and portfolio WordPress theme for branding studios, agencies, photographers and motion teams. Six home pages, a projects post type with full case-study pages and scroll motion built as Elementor widgets: a full-screen project stage with a stretching wordmark, a project track that moves sideways while you scroll, service lines that drift, digits that roll in, a zoom grid, a photo trail, five-bar page transitions and a square cursor with labels.

Every animation is a normal widget with its own settings, so you change texts, images and projects in the free Elementor; no Elementor Pro needed. Light (paper) and dark (ink) themes, six accent colours plus your own.

Watch the video tour: https://youtu.be/xbVy6vhSwCw

Built for Elementor

• 29 Marlo Elementor widgets: project stage, project index, moving film strip, page title, horizontal project track, project grid with filter and list view, statement whose words fill in, drifting service lines, opening service columns, services with a following photo, sliding process steps, rolling-digit numbers, values, about with portrait and facts, team, testimonials, client and press names, archive or awards table, wide photo that opens from the middle, zoom grid, photo trail, photo series, prices, questions and answers, latest articles, featured article, contact form, and site header and site footer for Elementor header and footer templates
• Motion is part of each widget, with on/off switches; a reduced motion mode follows the visitor's system setting
• Marlo block library in the Elementor editor: 59 ready blocks (every demo section, the header and the footer) with previews, categories and search
• Header and footer from Elementor templates with the free Elementor, site-wide or per page
• The Marlo colours and fonts in Elementor's global colours and fonts (and Elementor 4 variables)
• Page options in Elementor's page settings: page colours, accent, logo text, clock city, contact details and the footer call to action
• The editor loads the widget settings one by one, so it also works with a 128 MB PHP memory limit

One-click demo import

• Imports the 6 home pages, Work, Studio, Services, Journal and Contact, 5 projects, 7 articles, menus and settings
• Runs in short steps, so it also finishes on hosting with a 30-second and 128 MB PHP limit
• Or import a single page with the images, projects and articles it shows
• "Change site settings" is optional and lists exactly what it changes; "Remove demo content" deletes the demo and restores your settings
• Demo photos are downloaded from our demo server when you want them; otherwise same-size placeholders are used

Pages

• 6 home pages: Agency (project stage), Index (dark project list), Photographer (film strip, series, photo trail), Studio, Showreel (dark) and Services
• Work: project grid with discipline filter and a grid / list switch; project archive and discipline pages
• Case studies built from the project fields: hero with facts, cover, brief, idea and outcome, draggable gallery strip, client quote in the project colour, rolling results, colour chips and the next project
• Studio, Services (process steps, prices, questions), Journal (featured article, reading time, tags, share links, comments), Contact and a 404 page

Design and motion

• Light (paper) and dark (ink) themes, six accent colours (Acid, Orange, Pink, Mint, Violet, Sun) plus your own in the Customizer
• Wide, light accent words and highlighter marks in titles: write words and ==words== in any title
• Appearance panel inside the menu drawer: visitors switch theme, accent and motion; nothing floats over the page on load
• Lenis smooth scrolling, five-bar page transitions and a square cursor with labels, each with its own switch
• Self-hosted fonts (Archivo and DM Mono), no requests to Google Fonts

Site

• Contact form with service and budget chips, sent by e-mail with a spam trap and a privacy consent; works with any SMTP plugin
• Customizer panel for colours, motion, header, menu drawer, footer and journal
• Block editor (Gutenberg) ready: every core block styled on the site and in the editor, the Marlo palette and type sizes in theme.json (they follow the light and dark themes), 8 Marlo block styles and 7 block patterns
• Child theme, Polish and German translations, translation-ready (.pot), WPML and Polylang configuration, right-to-left stylesheets
• Documentation with 22 pages: installation, demo import, every widget, projects, journal, contact form, translation and FAQ

Updates

• Free licence key for one-click and automatic updates of the theme and Marlo Core in Dashboard > Updates; the theme works fully without it

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5 or newer (tested with 7.1.4), PHP 7.4 or newer (tested with PHP 8.3)
• Elementor, free version (tested with 4.3.5), installed from the theme's setup screen together with Marlo Core
• A PHP memory limit of 128 MB is enough for the demo import and the Elementor editor
• Tested in a current version of Google Chrome

Good to know

• The photos in the live demo are for preview only and are not included in the download. The download ships same-size placeholder images; the demo import can optionally download the demo photos for trying the theme out. Replace them with your own work before the site goes live.
• Brand names, people, quotes and figures in the demo are fictional.
• The contact form e-mails the message to you; it is not a booking or payment system.
• Search engine settings (meta descriptions) are left to an SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math.

Credits

• Lenis 1.3.27 (MIT), smooth scrolling
• Archivo and DM Mono (SIL Open Font License 1.1)
• TGM Plugin Activation 2.6.1 (GPL-2.0-or-later)

Changelog

All notable changes to the Marlo WordPress theme and the Marlo Core plugin.

Version 1.0.0 (2026-11-02)

Demo content

• One-click demo import: 6 home pages (Agency, Index, Photographer, Studio, Showreel, Services) and the Work, Studio, Services, Journal and Contact pages
• 5 projects with full case-study pages and 7 journal articles
• Demo menus, footer columns and page colours (dark and light pages, per-page accents, a photographer home with her own name and contact details)
• Demo photos downloaded from the NetMakers demo server, or plain placeholders of the same size that ship with Marlo Core
• Import a single page: pick one demo page and import it with the images, projects and articles it shows
• "Change site settings" option with a clear list of what changes
• Demo removal that restores your settings from before the import
• Images are imported in short steps, so the import also finishes on hosting with a 30-second and 128 MB PHP limit

Page building

• 29 Marlo Elementor widgets: project stage with a stretching wordmark, project index, moving film strip, page title, horizontal project track, project grid with filter and list view, statement whose words fill in, drifting service lines, opening service columns, services with a following photo, sliding process steps, rolling-digit numbers, values, about with portrait and facts, team, testimonials, client and press names, archive or awards table, wide photo that opens from the middle, zoom grid, photo trail, photo series, prices, questions and answers, latest articles, featured article, contact form, and site header and site footer for Elementor header and footer templates
• Every animation is a normal widget with its own settings: edit texts, images and projects in the free Elementor
• The Elementor editor loads the widget settings one by one, so it also works with a 128 MB PHP memory limit
• Marlo block library in the Elementor editor: a "Marlo blocks" button opens 59 ready blocks (every section of the demo pages, the site header and the footer) with previews, categories and search
• Header and footer from Elementor templates with the free Elementor: the Site header and Site footer widgets, a site-wide choice in the Customizer and a per-page choice in the page options; the demo import adds two example templates
• The Marlo colours and fonts in Elementor's Site Settings (global colours and fonts) and as Elementor 4 variables; the theme fonts are listed in Elementor's font picker without loading Google Fonts
• Page options in Elementor's page settings and in the Page options box: colours of the page, accent, logo text, clock city, contact details, footer call to action and big word

Block editor

• Block editor (Gutenberg): every core block styled on the site and in the editor (quotes, pullquotes, images, galleries, cover, media and text, columns, buttons, tables, code, details, search, calendar and more), in the light and dark themes
• theme.json with the Marlo palette (follows the theme and the accent), the six type sizes, content and wide widths; the editor shows posts on the site's background
• 8 Marlo block styles (Display and Label headings, Lead and Label paragraphs, Ink button, Framed image, Accent separator, Numbered rows list) and 7 block patterns (intro, call to action, process, client quote, two columns, questions and answers, project facts)

Projects and journal

• Projects post type with disciplines and case-study fields: summary, client, year, services, team, deliverables, project colours, card image, brief, idea and outcome, gallery strip, client quote with photo, results and colours
• Case-study page built from the fields: hero with crumbs and facts, cover, three-part story, draggable gallery strip, client quote in the project colour, rolling results, colour chips and the next project
• Project archive and discipline pages with the filter and the grid / list switch
• Journal with featured article, reading time, tags, share links, comments and "Keep reading"
• Article details box: title with accent words, reading time and author name

Design and motion

• Light (paper) and dark (ink) themes, six accent colours (Acid, Orange, Pink, Mint, Violet, Sun) plus your own
• Wide, light accent words and highlighter marks in titles, written as words and ==words==
• Appearance panel in the menu drawer: visitors can switch the theme, accent and motion
• Lenis smooth scrolling, five-bar page transitions and a square cursor with labels, each with an on/off switch
• Reduced motion mode that follows the visitor's system setting
• Header bar with a live clock, menu drawer with numbered links and a second list, footer with a big call to action and a big word whose letters rise in

Site

• Contact form with service and budget chips, sent by e-mail in the background, with a spam trap and a demo mode
• Customizer panel for colours, motion, header, menu drawer, footer and journal
• Welcome screen with the plugin installer
• Licence tab and automatic updates: activate your free licence key (from update.netmakers.pl) to get one-click and automatic updates of the theme and the Marlo Core plugin in Dashboard > Updates. The theme works fully without the key
• Child theme
• Polish and German translations, translation ready (.pot), WPML and Polylang configuration
• Right-to-left (RTL) stylesheets
• Self-hosted fonts (Archivo and DM Mono), no requests to Google Fonts