Nokia Themes
Make it your own.
People everywhere want to express themselves, and mobile consumers can do just that by using themes to change the on-screen look and feel of their devices. That's why themes are among the fastest-growing types of mobile device media.
For graphic designers and artists, themes offer some of the easiest and potentially most lucrative ways to enter the mobile market. Creating themes is easy using Carbide.ui in conjunction with any bitmap-graphics, vector-graphics, or audio editor.
Learn more about themes from these key Forum Nokia resources:
Getting Started with Carbide.ui S60 Theme Edition
This screencast provides a guide to setting up Carbide.ui Theme Edition before showing how to create, edit, package, and deploy a theme for S60 devices.
Creating Themes for Series 40 and S60 Devices: Visual Guide v2.1
This document provides guidance on creating effective, high-quality themes for Series 40 and S60 devices. It offers insight into designing uniquely styled and effective theme elements, which offer mobile consumers the best in visual design and device usability.
What is a theme?
A theme is a package of graphics and audio that can replace the default look and sound of the UI on Series 40 and S60 devices. Themes can alter almost every aspect of the UI. Changes can range from the simple, such as altering the colors of lines in the interface, to the complex, such as adding animated graphics for backgrounds and icons. In addition, audio can be attached to events such as alarms and can be created in any of the audio formats supported by Series 40 and S60 devices.
Themes afford ever-expanding development possibilities. For example, the latest version of Carbide.ui Theme Edition, Nokia's theme-creation tool, supports several new theme elements for the Series 40 UI, such as virtual-button and scroll bar items, as well as dimming in lists and menu screens. For the latest S60 devices, Carbide.ui plug-ins offer new theme elements, such as the e-mail pop-up and enhanced calendar features for the Nokia E71 multimedia computer.
Why should I create themes?
The market for mobile content is expanding rapidly, as consumers become increasingly familiar with the options for personalizing their mobile devices. Themes enable users to make very personal statements about their passions: From displaying a beautiful image to showing support for a favorite sports team, the possibilities are endless.
Themes accounted for 15 percent of all sales through the Nokia Software Market in 2007, with sales tripling during that year.
For businesses, themes offer opportunities for promotion and building brand awareness. A theme can be used to create an immersive graphical world, in which a product brand maintains a presence through all aspects of a consumer's mobile-phone use.
It's easy to start creating themes. Theme creation requires very little new learning: If you're already creating digital content, you almost certainly have the skills to create the graphics and audio for themes. What's more, the application for creating theme packages, Carbide.ui Theme Edition, is available from Forum Nokia free of charge.
How do I create themes?
Creating themes is straightforward with Carbide.ui Theme Edition, a graphical tool that makes it easy to add graphics, colors, and sounds to elements in the Series 40 and S60 UIs.
To simplify the editing process, you can integrate your favorite tools for editing bitmap graphics, SVGT graphics, and audio with Carbide.ui Theme Edition.
In addition to the QuickStart guide, Carbide.ui includes tutorials to help you get started. You might also want to take a look at the Carbide.ui screencasts, such as Getting Started with Carbide.ui S60 Theme Edition for Symbian OS and Editing Themes with Carbide.ui S60 Theme Edition for Symbian OS.
Ready to start developing themes? Download Carbide.ui 3.2 Theme Edition »
If you're new to mobile software distribution, MOSH is an excellent starting point. When you upload your application to MOSH, you make it available to a community of Nokia device users who are keenly interested in content and applications. Create your MOSH account »
What Nokia devices can I create themes for?
Themes can be created for Nokia mobile devices based on:
- S60 2nd Edition, including all feature-pack versions. See the device specifications »
- S60 3rd Edition, including all feature-pack versions. See the device specifications »
- Series 40 3rd Edition. See the device specifications »
- Series 40 5th Edition and Series 40 5th Edition, Feature Pack 1. See the device specifications »
