Custom Themes boasts 116 themes as of writing this, and I counted about half as many designers.  What a sub culture!  Design > Web > Blogging > Microblogging > CSS/Tumblr Language.  Try explaining that group of friends to your grandma.

It’s a shame, though, that we run under the discretion of what is basically a blog.  I’d like to say that it’s well managed, but it’s ‘approval’ is terribly slow.  I’d like to say that it encourages community, but there is no communication.  I’d like to say that its esthetics hold up to that of Tumblr’s, but they don’t come close.

I will say that with the resources available — tags, submission ability, admin controls — it does a really nice job.  Tumblr makes it extraordinarily simple for hatching ideas like this, but I still feel like this one deserves more.  What I’d really like to see is the community managed right under Tumblr; a place that offers both the support of the designers and of the admins.

By having a theme repository within Tumblr, there are some obvious advantages: (1) There could be access to now-private stats, like what are the browser percentages, and how often does the dashboard user actually read a blog in context?  (2) Knowing what has been updated in /custom_themes without having to check it.  (3) Cleaner system of reporting bugs.

The system set up right now is working.  Looking at the numbers above make that an obvious thing to say.  But it could definitely be better, and I’m sure this isn’t news to the people making it possible.