As we close out the year here at NationBuilder, we've got a great gift for you from the workshop of ace designer Jesse Haff. The new "Focus" theme is free for our customers as one of our official templates, and features a full-screen background image of your choosing.

Jesse also went to town on the date and reactions text and links for blog posts in Focus, calling them out prominently in each post as graphic elements (right).

To try out the new theme in your nation, go to your control panel and Pages/Sites > Theme > Switch theme > Official themes > Focus. To change out the background image, it's Pages/Sites > Settings > Background images. Images around 1024 x 768 pixels will work best. If you don't yet have a nation, start your 14-day free trial here. We've also made it much easier to 

We spent a lot of time at last weeks' NationBuilder Summit in LA thinking up great features for you, and Focus is an early glimpse at the type of goodness we've got planned for you in 2012. We're kinda crazy about it ourselves and have been trying it out all over the place.

On Jim's "The Internet Is My Religion":

At AdrielHampton.com:

And on our "Abe for Prez" demo site:

We hope you'll enjoy Focus as much as we do.