Theme Updates - Spotify & Pinterest

As soon as we got the details on the new Spotify player on Tumblr, Jess and I put in some long hours over the last two days (and nights) to pulled off major updates to all 15 of our Style Hatch Tumblr themes.

In addition to support for the Spotify player, we added Pinterest’s ‘pin it’ button to the share options.  We will be publishing a full list of changes soon since some of the themes got quite a bit of additional love.

If you have any questions send us an email at support@stylehatch.co or hit us up on Twitter @stylehatch.  Now we can get back to wrapping up a bunch of new themes we have lined up!

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adidas NEO Label It interesting watching brands navigate their way onto Tumblr.  The ones that do well clearly understand the unique culture behind the Tumblr community.  Brands and everyone on Tumblr should take these guidelines for posting to heart in this order (Source - Seth Godin | The TED imperatives): Be interested. Be generous. Be interesting. Connect. As a bonus they did a fantastic job customizing our Style Hatch premium theme Juuvy.  Other brands that we have noticed who are doing great job on Tumblr and using one of our themes: Kate Spade (Swell) Nike ID (MARS) Puma (Juuvy) Alternative Apparel (Swell) Travel Channel (Atlantic Noir) Lucky Magazine (Swell) Men’s Health (Juuvy) Quiksilver (Swell/Atlantic Noir hybrid) X Games (Backburner) Time Magazine (Inspire Well) Ben and Jerry (Nova) Fab (MARS) Photojojo (Inspire Well)

adidas NEO Label

It interesting watching brands navigate their way onto Tumblr.  The ones that do well clearly understand the unique culture behind the Tumblr community.  Brands and everyone on Tumblr should take these guidelines for posting to heart in this order (Source - Seth Godin | The TED imperatives):

  1. Be interested.
  2. Be generous.
  3. Be interesting.
  4. Connect.

As a bonus they did a fantastic job customizing our Style Hatch premium theme Juuvy.  Other brands that we have noticed who are doing great job on Tumblr and using one of our themes:

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Look Back at 2011: Most Popular Themes

staff:

Tumblr gives you complete control over all aspects of your blog, and once you know some HTML, you can make them look pretty much any way you want! On the other hand, many of us would rather benefit from the skills of the thousands of brilliant designers whose work is featured in the Tumblr Theme Garden.

The top themes of 2011 were…

The Minimalist

Inspire Well

Wow!  That certainly made our week here at Style Hatch.  We have some pretty amazing new themes in the works that will be debuting over the next few weeks, including our new Artist Series with a curated collection of preset styles.  2012 is going to be a fantastic year.

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Penman Theme Earlier this morning we just submitted Penman as our thirteenth premium Tumblr theme.  With an oversized layout and a focus on typographical details it’s a perfect fit for those of you who want to post high resolution images and videos as well as longer text posts.  Along with all our other Style Hatch themes, Penman is completely responsive with a layout that adapts from large resolution monitors down to tablets and smartphones. On a more technical side, this theme was our first to experiment with combining the HTML5 History API with infinite scrolling.  As you load additional pages through infinite scrolling you will notice that the URL updates (penmantheme.tumblr.com/page/2).  This allows you to hit back on your browser and pick up where you left off if you click a link off from the blog. To get an idea of how flexible Penman is, check out our alternate demo site Penman Dark featuring an all dark appearance. If you have any questions about Penman feel free to email us at penman@stylehatch.co

Penman Theme

Earlier this morning we just submitted Penman as our thirteenth premium Tumblr theme.  With an oversized layout and a focus on typographical details it’s a perfect fit for those of you who want to post high resolution images and videos as well as longer text posts.  Along with all our other Style Hatch themes, Penman is completely responsive with a layout that adapts from large resolution monitors down to tablets and smartphones.

On a more technical side, this theme was our first to experiment with combining the HTML5 History API with infinite scrolling.  As you load additional pages through infinite scrolling you will notice that the URL updates (penmantheme.tumblr.com/page/2).  This allows you to hit back on your browser and pick up where you left off if you click a link off from the blog.

To get an idea of how flexible Penman is, check out our alternate demo site Penman Dark featuring an all dark appearance.

If you have any questions about Penman feel free to email us at penman@stylehatch.co

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Studio Sweet Studio

Several months ago I stumbled on the original Studio Sweet Studio blog created and currated by Meg Lewis and Tuesday Bassen.  The duo created Studio Sweet Studio to feature the workspace and process of artists, illustrators and designers.  After discovering their blog I reached out to Meg to see if she was interested in creating a theme for Style Hatch, and a few weeks later Juuvy was born.

Last week I was thrilled to get an email from Meg letting us know that they were in the process of moving Studio Sweet Studio over to Tumblr.  They both did a fantastic job customizing and hacking our Atlantic Noir theme.

Go follow Studio Sweet Studio on Tumblr.  You will not regret it.

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Juuvy

Digital shop Style Hatch is proud to debut Juuvy, a fashionable chic modular grid with adjustable post sizes!

I was thrilled when Meg Lewis (Ghostly Ferns) agreed to collaborating with us on the design of Juuvy.  She did a fantastic job!  Make sure you check out her site and follow her on Tumblr and Twitter.

Like all of our other premium Tumblr themes, Juuvy comes jam packed with features that allow you to customize virtually everything including the colors, layout, typography, and adding social features.  Check out the Juuvy demo site and Juuvy York for a different dark flavor.  Pick up Juuvy on Tumblr for $49, and as always feel free to email us questions!

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Verge Theme Yesterday our 10th premium theme Verge went live live on Tumblr!  Verge is a unique side scrolling theme with individual post width control, similar to Inspire Well.  Just add “xs”, “xx” or “xl” tags to each post to set the widths to small (250px), medium (500px) or large (620px).  Also, if you want to switch things up with a dark theme you can switch Verge to a black mode in the Appearance settings.  More details on the features… I’m extremely happy how this collaboration with designer Nick Jones turned out.  As I was building the theme out I wanted to make sure the theme was full of small details that make Verge feel unique.  For the ribbon style page titles I used Paravel’s Lettering.js typography plugin to handle the correct padding on line breaks and positioning of the corner turns.  Using media queries to target mobile devices Verge looks beautiful on both an iPhone and iPad.  Also, throughout the theme you’ll notice a number of subtle animated elements that are powered by CSS3 animations and occasionally triggered by jQuery. If you have ideas, suggestions or questions let us know - verge@stylehatch.co

Verge Theme

Yesterday our 10th premium theme Verge went live live on Tumblr!  Verge is a unique side scrolling theme with individual post width control, similar to Inspire Well.  Just add “xs”, “xx” or “xl” tags to each post to set the widths to small (250px), medium (500px) or large (620px).  Also, if you want to switch things up with a dark theme you can switch Verge to a black mode in the Appearance settings.  More details on the features…

I’m extremely happy how this collaboration with designer Nick Jones turned out.  As I was building the theme out I wanted to make sure the theme was full of small details that make Verge feel unique.  For the ribbon style page titles I used Paravel’s Lettering.js typography plugin to handle the correct padding on line breaks and positioning of the corner turns.  Using media queries to target mobile devices Verge looks beautiful on both an iPhone and iPad.  Also, throughout the theme you’ll notice a number of subtle animated elements that are powered by CSS3 animations and occasionally triggered by jQuery.

If you have ideas, suggestions or questions let us know - verge@stylehatch.co

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Style Hatch Updates

Now that Style Hatch’s first employee Jess Brown has finally moved to southern California with his family, we’re charging full steam ahead on the future of Style Hatch and two other top-secret startups.  I’m loving the new energy in the office and looking forward to bringing on the next talented person—email me if you’re an advanced front-end developer interested in joining the team.

Charity Water

Charity Water
From the beginning of Style Hatch I have wanted to make giving a core part of the company’s culture.  In June we setup a Charity Water campaign with a goal of giving $15,000 to provide life changing clean water for 750 people.  Already with $7,200 we’re nearly half of the way there, and we should hit our goal in the next 37 days of the campaign.  Feel free to contribute. 

Theme Updates

Theme Updates
Over the last few weeks we’ve pushed through massive updates to all of our existing themes to add in our new photoset plugin (yay for high resolution photosets!), support for the new Google +1 button, new social icons, major performance increases and bug fixes.  In all Atlantic Noir, Ascender, Backburner, Inspire Well, MARS, Nova, Savory,  Swell, and Transcender have thousands of new lines of code and improvements thanks to all the great feedback we have received.

Customer Experience a.k.a Support

2,741 email requests resolved
In my opinion, quality support is far more important than the design and quality of the themes—although important.  When someone emails us it is many times our one shot at giving someone a personal experience with the Style Hatch brand.  Making customer experience and support a top priority has been our secret sauce in converting people into fans.  Plus, all emails that come in through support@stylehatch.co get an answer within a day or sooner.  As of today we have resolved 2,741 email requests!

New Themes

Right now we have four new themes in the works that we’re excited to launch.  Overall we’ll continue to focus on super high-quality, unique and highly customizable themes over launching as many themes as possible.  We’ll keep on pouring love into each of our themes!

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Atlantic Noir Theme Over the weekend the latest Style Hatch theme for Tumblr, Atlantic Noir, went live!  For quite some time I have wanted to launch an extremely clean and modern theme that was designed with editorial content in mind.  With flexibility of the appearance options you can go from a colorful fashion feel on the demo site to dark and modern on the Empire—Atlantic Noir demo. This is also our first theme to launch with true responsive design that adjusts based on your browser size or mobile device.  As you move to a smaller resolution the posts will get slightly less wide, switch to a single column and then go into a flexible layout for mobile devices.  Try it out on your iPad or iPhone. Send us an email if you have any questions, feedback or suggestions - atlanticnoir@stylehatch.co Also, make sure you check out the custom, non-Flash photoset player.

Atlantic Noir Theme

Over the weekend the latest Style Hatch theme for Tumblr, Atlantic Noir, went live!  For quite some time I have wanted to launch an extremely clean and modern theme that was designed with editorial content in mind.  With flexibility of the appearance options you can go from a colorful fashion feel on the demo site to dark and modern on the Empire—Atlantic Noir demo.

This is also our first theme to launch with true responsive design that adjusts based on your browser size or mobile device.  As you move to a smaller resolution the posts will get slightly less wide, switch to a single column and then go into a flexible layout for mobile devices.  Try it out on your iPad or iPhone.

Send us an email if you have any questions, feedback or suggestions - atlanticnoir@stylehatch.co

Also, make sure you check out the custom, non-Flash photoset player.

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Ascender Yesterday the latest Style Hatch theme, Ascender, went live on the Tumblr premium themes garden.  Ascender is an evolution of the popular Transcender theme with a grid layout, better styling for the built in light and dark modes and full Typekit support. The first update for the theme is already in production which will include infinite scrolling, better iPhone/iPad support so that you can disable the default Tumblr iPhone theme, and a few other surprises.  All the theme updates are free and automatic, and they come with Zappos-like (or Nordstroms if you prefer) customer support.  Email - ascender@stylehatch.co Check out the demo sites - Light version with a smaller grid | Dark version with a larger grid

Ascender

Yesterday the latest Style Hatch theme, Ascender, went live on the Tumblr premium themes garden.  Ascender is an evolution of the popular Transcender theme with a grid layout, better styling for the built in light and dark modes and full Typekit support.

The first update for the theme is already in production which will include infinite scrolling, better iPhone/iPad support so that you can disable the default Tumblr iPhone theme, and a few other surprises.  All the theme updates are free and automatic, and they come with Zappos-like (or Nordstroms if you prefer) customer support.  Email - ascender@stylehatch.co

Check out the demo sites - Light version with a smaller grid | Dark version with a larger grid

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Swell 1.0 Launch & Style Hatch Update Finally, the latest Style Hatch premium theme, Swell is live!  Although the design is a bit more on the simplistic side there is an insane amount of detail that went into the build and overall experience.  Early next week I’ll write up a post going into the details of how I pull off some of the more intense features.  For now, here’s an overview of some of my favorite features: Infinite scrolling & lightbox post view - One of the things I don’t like about most infinite scrolling sites is scrolling down several pages, clicking on a post, and going back to find that I lost where I’m at.  To get around this in Swell I introduced a lightbox style post viewer.  With the viewer the page never has to refresh or update as you’re browsing. Deep linking and browser history - As you’re going through the posts you will notice that the URL updates with post hashbangs (/#!/post/5649171891/water-changes-everything) that allow you to copy and paste the URLs.  Plus this allows for the browser to track your history so that you can use the back / forward buttons. Keyboard shortcuts - Browse the posts by hitting J/K to go next/back and ESC to close the window. Description reveal - Rather than cluttering the page with the site description, recent tweets, liked posts, Flickr posts, etc all of those features are hidden at the top of the site in a reveal.  You can click the top right triangle, about link in the header, or browse to (/#!/about) to see the reveal. Typekit - Like all the other Style Hatch themes this one includes full Typekit support allowing you to set the title, body and UI fonts. Swell Updates After seeing real-world usage of Swell I already have a growing list of tweaks and improvements for the theme.  Most of them are focused on increasing performance so that the theme is lightning fast when hundreds of posts are on the page at once.  Across all the Style Hatch themes I’ve pushed live nearly 100 updates, so this is only the beginning. If you have any questions, ideas or issue email me personally at swell@stylehatch.co.  I always try to get to emails within a day with the exception of weekends and holidays. Giving Back At the beginning of May I decided to start taking a portion of each theme’s sales to give back and help do good in developing countries.  Now, for every 5 themes sold 1 person will be given access to clean water through Charity Water.  At the close of the month I will share more details, including the ability to track and see specific freshwater projects that were made possible through Style Hatch.  I really hope that this doesn’t come across as a marketing gimmick.  Honestly I’m extremely excited to give back to something that makes a real difference.  Already hundreds of people will be helped.  Learn more about what Charity Water is doing—Why Water? The Future of Style Hatch There is a lot going on behind the scenes with Style Hatch right now as I’m working to launch even more premium Tumblr themes and move to other platforms (no plans for Wordpress themes).  On Monday Jess Brown, my first full-time employee, starts working with me at New Ezra and Style Hatch.  His official role will be the director of customer experience which will cover support, outreach, as well as many other things.  The future is extremely bright!

Swell 1.0 Launch & Style Hatch Update

Finally, the latest Style Hatch premium theme, Swell is live!  Although the design is a bit more on the simplistic side there is an insane amount of detail that went into the build and overall experience.  Early next week I’ll write up a post going into the details of how I pull off some of the more intense features.  For now, here’s an overview of some of my favorite features:

  • Infinite scrolling & lightbox post view - One of the things I don’t like about most infinite scrolling sites is scrolling down several pages, clicking on a post, and going back to find that I lost where I’m at.  To get around this in Swell I introduced a lightbox style post viewer.  With the viewer the page never has to refresh or update as you’re browsing.
  • Deep linking and browser history - As you’re going through the posts you will notice that the URL updates with post hashbangs (/#!/post/5649171891/water-changes-everything) that allow you to copy and paste the URLs.  Plus this allows for the browser to track your history so that you can use the back / forward buttons.
  • Keyboard shortcuts - Browse the posts by hitting J/K to go next/back and ESC to close the window.
  • Description reveal - Rather than cluttering the page with the site description, recent tweets, liked posts, Flickr posts, etc all of those features are hidden at the top of the site in a reveal.  You can click the top right triangle, about link in the header, or browse to (/#!/about) to see the reveal.
  • Typekit - Like all the other Style Hatch themes this one includes full Typekit support allowing you to set the title, body and UI fonts.

Swell Updates

After seeing real-world usage of Swell I already have a growing list of tweaks and improvements for the theme.  Most of them are focused on increasing performance so that the theme is lightning fast when hundreds of posts are on the page at once.  Across all the Style Hatch themes I’ve pushed live nearly 100 updates, so this is only the beginning.

If you have any questions, ideas or issue email me personally at swell@stylehatch.co.  I always try to get to emails within a day with the exception of weekends and holidays.

Giving Back

At the beginning of May I decided to start taking a portion of each theme’s sales to give back and help do good in developing countries.  Now, for every 5 themes sold 1 person will be given access to clean water through Charity Water.  At the close of the month I will share more details, including the ability to track and see specific freshwater projects that were made possible through Style Hatch.  I really hope that this doesn’t come across as a marketing gimmick.  Honestly I’m extremely excited to give back to something that makes a real difference.  Already hundreds of people will be helped.  Learn more about what Charity Water is doing—Why Water?

The Future of Style Hatch

There is a lot going on behind the scenes with Style Hatch right now as I’m working to launch even more premium Tumblr themes and move to other platforms (no plans for Wordpress themes).  On Monday Jess Brown, my first full-time employee, starts working with me at New Ezra and Style Hatch.  His official role will be the director of customer experience which will cover support, outreach, as well as many other things.  The future is extremely bright!

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Style Hatch Theme Updates Earlier today major updates just went live for all six of the Style Hatch premium Tumblr themes.  Now all of the themes have Typekit support built in making it much easier to customize the fonts, as well as a number of other improvements and bug fixes.  Including the latest updates, this brings the total number of theme updates to 56 since the first theme launched nearly a year ago.   The next round of updates will introduce image light boxes across the themes and support for the new Instagram API. If you need help with your theme, have questions or even a suggestion I always do my best to reply in less than a day, with a bit slower responses over the weekend.  hello@stylehatch.co Backburner 1.4.0  Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts Twitter - fixed the issue with status links Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages Additional minor fixes and updates View the demo site backburnertheme.tumblr.com | Purchase Backburner for $19 | Email backburner@stylehatch.co for support Inspire Well 1.4.0 Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts Infinite Scrolling - performance has been dramatically improved fixing the issues with posts overlapping in certain situations and photosets not resizing down to the “xs” post size. iPad - Improved the presentation of the theme while holding the iPad in portrait mode. Chrome - Fixed a rare bug that caused rendering Links - Images should no longer stretch in the caption Twitter - fixed the issue with status links Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages Long URLs and words should now properly hyphenate and wrap to new lines Additional minor fixes and updates View the demo site inspirewell.tumblr.com & inspirewell-photo.tumblr.com | Purchase Inspire Well for $49 | Email inspirewell@stylehatch.co for support Nova 1.2.0 Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts Text - Post titles are now links to the permalink page Twitter - fixed the issue with status links Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages Added CSS classes to various elements to allow people to manipulate or hide the theme credit and audio plays  Long URLs and words should now properly hyphenate and wrap to new lines Additional minor fixes and updates View the demo site novatheme.tumblr.com & novatheme-hd.tumblr.com | Purchase Nova for $49 | Email nova@stylehatch.co for support Savory 1.1.0 Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts Social Icons - now you can add links to various social sites from Customize > Apperance Sidebar - there is a new option to allow the sidebar elements to be visible on post permalink pages Twitter - fixed the issue with status links Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages Additional minor fixes and updates View the demo site savorytheme.tumblr.com | Purchase Savory for $49 | Email savory@stylehatch.co for support Transcender 1.2.0 Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts Twitter - fixed the issue with status links Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages Additional minor fixes and updates View the demo site transcendertheme.tumblr.com | Purchase Transcender for $49 | Email transcender@stylehatch.co for support MARS 1.0.2 Typekit - added the options to set the body and title fonts Video - Vimeo player controls now should match the video accent color Twitter - fixed the issue with status links Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages Additional minor fixes and updates View the demo site marstheme.tumblr.com & marstheme-columns.tumblr.com | Purchase MARS for $49 | Email mars@stylehatch.co for support

Style Hatch Theme Updates

Earlier today major updates just went live for all six of the Style Hatch premium Tumblr themes.  Now all of the themes have Typekit support built in making it much easier to customize the fonts, as well as a number of other improvements and bug fixes.  Including the latest updates, this brings the total number of theme updates to 56 since the first theme launched nearly a year ago.  

The next round of updates will introduce image light boxes across the themes and support for the new Instagram API.

If you need help with your theme, have questions or even a suggestion I always do my best to reply in less than a day, with a bit slower responses over the weekend.  hello@stylehatch.co

Backburner 1.4.0 

  • Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts
  • Twitter - fixed the issue with status links
  • Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages
  • Additional minor fixes and updates

View the demo site backburnertheme.tumblr.com | Purchase Backburner for $19 | Email backburner@stylehatch.co for support

Inspire Well 1.4.0

  • Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts
  • Infinite Scrolling - performance has been dramatically improved fixing the issues with posts overlapping in certain situations and photosets not resizing down to the “xs” post size.
  • iPad - Improved the presentation of the theme while holding the iPad in portrait mode.
  • Chrome - Fixed a rare bug that caused rendering
  • Links - Images should no longer stretch in the caption
  • Twitter - fixed the issue with status links
  • Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages
  • Long URLs and words should now properly hyphenate and wrap to new lines
  • Additional minor fixes and updates

View the demo site inspirewell.tumblr.com & inspirewell-photo.tumblr.com | Purchase Inspire Well for $49 | Email inspirewell@stylehatch.co for support

Nova 1.2.0

  • Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts
  • Text - Post titles are now links to the permalink page
  • Twitter - fixed the issue with status links
  • Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages
  • Added CSS classes to various elements to allow people to manipulate or hide the theme credit and audio plays 
  • Long URLs and words should now properly hyphenate and wrap to new lines
  • Additional minor fixes and updates

View the demo site novatheme.tumblr.com & novatheme-hd.tumblr.com | Purchase Nova for $49 | Email nova@stylehatch.co for support

Savory 1.1.0

  • Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts
  • Social Icons - now you can add links to various social sites from Customize > Apperance
  • Sidebar - there is a new option to allow the sidebar elements to be visible on post permalink pages
  • Twitter - fixed the issue with status links
  • Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages
  • Additional minor fixes and updates

View the demo site savorytheme.tumblr.com | Purchase Savory for $49 | Email savory@stylehatch.co for support

Transcender 1.2.0

  • Typekit - added support and options to set the body and title fonts
  • Twitter - fixed the issue with status links
  • Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages
  • Additional minor fixes and updates

View the demo site transcendertheme.tumblr.com | Purchase Transcender for $49 | Email transcender@stylehatch.co for support

MARS 1.0.2

  • Typekit - added the options to set the body and title fonts
  • Video - Vimeo player controls now should match the video accent color
  • Twitter - fixed the issue with status links
  • Titles - improved the site title for tag results pages
  • Additional minor fixes and updates

View the demo site marstheme.tumblr.com & marstheme-columns.tumblr.com | Purchase MARS for $49 | Email mars@stylehatch.co for support

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MARS—Columns Layout The latest Style Hatch theme, MARS, to launch last Friday includes three layout modes—default, wide and columns.  To highlight the columns layout, I setup a new MARS columns layout demo site.  The new demo site also shows the flexibility of the theme with different post-type colors, background, and Typekit fonts.  See the original MARS demo site. Typekit fonts used: titles - Sommet Slab | body - Obliqua

MARS—Columns Layout

The latest Style Hatch theme, MARS, to launch last Friday includes three layout modes—default, wide and columns.  To highlight the columns layout, I setup a new MARS columns layout demo site.  The new demo site also shows the flexibility of the theme with different post-type colors, background, and Typekit fonts.  See the original MARS demo site.

Typekit fonts used: titles - Sommet Slab | body - Obliqua

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