Mason

Is your Ghost site really showing off your best work, or are your projects still buried in a blog-style feed? With the Mason Ghost theme from Storied Themes, I finally get a layout that treats your portfolio as the main event, not an afterthought.

If you’re a designer, illustrator, digital artist, or brand studio who wants a simple portfolio ghost theme that puts visuals first and words second, Mason is very much built for you. It dials in a clean, scrollable project grid on the homepage, keeps navigation minimal, and lets Ghost handle the publishing engine in the background.

I recommend Mason as a portfolio ghost theme for people who want to showcase their work, not run a complex publication. There are some missing portfolio-specific details (like structured client fields or case-study templates), and there’s no separate blog article template, but as a focused project showcase it does its job well.

Key takeaways (TL;DR)

• Portfolio-first layout: Mason is built to showcase your projects directly on the homepage with a clean grid, big images, and simple category navigation.
• Ideal for creatives: Best suited to designers, illustrators, digital artists, and brand specialists who need a lean portfolio template instead of a heavy magazine.
• Strong technical baseline: PageSpeed scores of 91 (Accessibility), 100 (Best Practices), and 100 (SEO) give you a solid starting point for performance and search.
• Accessibility needs work: ADA/WCAG audit score of 83% with 22 issues means you’ll want to address contrast, semantics, and other details; sites under ~95 can face higher UX and legal risk in the US.
• Rating: I rate Mason ★★★★☆ (4/5) and recommend it if you’re using Ghost primarily as a portfolio, not a full-blown blog plus portfolio combo.

What makes Mason Ghost theme unique?

Mason is unique because it treats your Ghost site like a single, cohesive portfolio wall—your work appears immediately on the homepage in a visually rich grid, driven by tags like Branding, Artwork, and Digital, instead of hiding behind blog archives or complex layouts.

That “portfolio-first” attitude is the core differentiator: Mason isn’t trying to be everything for everyone. It picks a lane—creative portfolios—and stays in it.

Theme overview: who Mason is really for

Storied Themes is a small studio focused entirely on premium Ghost themes, designed so publishers, businesses and entrepreneurs can focus on their content while the theme handles the presentation. Mason continues that philosophy but narrows in on creative work.

On the Mason demo, the site opens with a personable “Who’s writing” block:

• A friendly intro (“Hey, I’m Mason”)
• A short bio about being a digital artist and brand director
• Social links for Facebook, X, LinkedIn and Instagram

Right after that, the portfolio grid takes over the page, built from Ghost posts tagged into categories like Branding, Artwork, Digital, Creative, Author, Story. The result feels less like a blog and more like a modern portfolio board.

From a persona angle, I see Mason working best for:

• Freelance designers and brand studios
• 3D artists, illustrators, and digital painters
• Photographers or visual creators with a strong image-led body of work

If your main goal is to showcase your work rather than run a long-form publication, Mason fits that need nicely.

Top features of the Mason Ghost theme

Navigation and layout

At the top, Mason gives you a compact navigation:

• Primary links: Branding, Artwork, Digital
• A “More” menu for Creative, Author, and Story
• Quick actions: Subscribe and Search

This keeps the focus on your categories of work while still giving visitors easy ways to filter or search.

The homepage layout is a single-column scroll with:

• Large featured images for each project
• Titles and tags to show the type of work
• A “Load more” button once you reach the initial set of projects
• A small utility bar near the bottom with search and newsletter signup

Because everything is built on standard Ghost posts and tags, you don’t have to learn a complex builder—your categories and tags drive the sections.

Author intro and social proof

The “Who’s writing” panel at the top acts like a compact about section:

• Your name and short tagline
• A short, story-like bio focused on what you do
• Social icons linking to your main platforms

This is a subtle but effective way to build trust and make the portfolio feel personal rather than anonymous.

Newsletter and search

At the bottom of the page, Mason includes:

• A newsletter subscribe form with a confirmation message
• A Search interface attached to the post list

These hooks leverage Ghost’s built-in subscription system and content search, helping you turn portfolio visitors into email subscribers without adding third-party tools.

Ghost-native foundation

Mason is clearly built as a native Ghost theme:

• You benefit from Ghost’s SEO fields (meta title, description, canonical URLs) and clean HTML structure.
• You can manage content, tags, and navigation directly from Ghost Admin—no extra builder UI to maintain.

Because I couldn’t access the dedicated Mason documentation and theme product page (they timed out at the time of writing), I’m deliberately sticking to what I can see in the demo and on the Storied Themes site, rather than guessing at hidden settings or options.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Portfolio-focused from the first screen
  Mason is designed as a ghost theme for portfolio sites where the homepage is your project wall. Visitors see your work immediately, not a generic blog roll.
• Clean, distraction-free layout
  The combination of a simple header, a brief bio, and a tall project grid keeps attention exactly where it should be—on your work and your images.
• Straightforward content model
  Because projects are just Ghost posts organized via tags and navigation, you can manage everything with Ghost’s normal editor and tagging system. There are no custom content builders to learn.
• Strong performance and SEO scores
  With 91 for Accessibility, 100 for Best Practices, and 100 for SEO in Google PageSpeed Insights, Mason gives you a technically solid base to build on—especially important for a visual-heavy site.
• Built by a Ghost-focused studio
  Storied Themes only builds Ghost themes, which tends to mean better alignment with Ghost’s roadmap and a more focused support experience.

Cons

• Limited portfolio metadata
  Mason doesn’t expose specific fields for client names, project dates, problems, and solutions. If you like detailed case-study layouts, you’ll need to manually structure that content inside your posts.
• No separate templates for blog vs portfolio
  There isn’t a clear split between “portfolio items” and “blog articles.” If you want a distinct editorial blog alongside your portfolio, Mason will feel limiting compared to more multipurpose themes.
• Accessibility isn’t fully compliant yet
  With an ADA/WCAG score of 83% and 22 issues found, Mason falls below the ~95+ score generally recommended to minimize accessibility and legal risks in the US. You’ll want to budget time for improving things like color contrast, landmarks, focus states, and alt text.

Taken together, these cons are exactly why I rate the theme 4 out of 5, not 5. It’s great at what it chooses to do, but there’s still room to grow in accessibility and richer portfolio details.

Use cases: when Mason makes sense

For designers and brand studios

If you run a design studio, freelance brand practice, or creative consultancy, Mason gives you:

• A project grid on the homepage that feels like a portfolio wall
• Category links (Branding, Artwork, Digital) that mirror the way clients think about services
• A short personal bio and social links to build trust and drive contact

This is perfect when you want prospects to quickly see the quality of your work with minimal friction.

For illustrators and digital artists

Mason’s large image thumbnails and clean typography work well for:

• Illustration series
• Concept art
• 3D renders
• Experimental visuals

If your work is highly visual and you need a simple project showcase that doesn’t overshadow your images, Mason’s layout plays nicely with that.

For multi-disciplinary creatives with light blogging needs

If you want to occasionally publish stories or behind-the-scenes posts but not run a full magazine, Mason is a good fit. You can still publish text-heavy pieces, but they’ll live in the same project grid as visual work—so I’d treat them as “project stories” rather than a standalone blog.

If you need a serious editorial blog with categories, archives, and multiple layouts, I’d look at more multipurpose themes instead (see the alternatives section below).

Performance, security & SEO benefits

You’ve already measured:

• Accessibility: 91 (PageSpeed)
• Best Practices: 100
• SEO: 100

For a visual portfolio theme, those are strong scores. They indicate:

• Minimal blocking scripts or heavy third-party embeds
• Clean HTML and browser best practices
• Good baseline meta and markup for search engines

On the accessibility side, the separate audit result—83% score with 22 issues—is more concerning. As a general rule of thumb, sites with accessibility scores below ~95 are more exposed to user frustration and potential legal disputes in jurisdictions where accessibility is enforced. Prioritize fixes around contrast, semantics, focus indicators, and ARIA where appropriate.

From a security standpoint, Mason relies on Ghost’s core stack and your hosting environment. If you’re using a reputable Ghost hosting provider or Ghost(Pro), most of the heavy lifting around TLS, patches, and infrastructure security is already handled.

Installation & customization guide

Because the dedicated Mason documentation page was not reachable at the time I checked, I’d follow the standard Ghost theme installation flow and then adjust for Mason’s specifics.

How to install the Mason Ghost theme

1. Download Mason
   • Purchase/download Mason from Storied Themes and save the mason.zip theme file to your computer.
2. Upload the theme in Ghost Admin
   • Go to Settings → Design & branding → Change theme → Upload theme.
   • Upload mason.zip and click Activate once Ghost finishes processing it.
3. Set up navigation
   • In Settings → Navigation, recreate the top menu from the demo: links for Branding, Artwork, Digital, and the “More” dropdown items (Creative, Author, Story), all pointing to filtered URLs or tag-based routes.
4. Create and tag your projects
   • Create new posts for each project.
   • Use tags like #branding, #artwork, #digital, #creative, etc., to control how they appear under each menu category.
5. Configure the author bio and social links
   • Edit your primary author profile to match the “Who’s writing” block: name, bio, avatar, and social URLs. Mason pulls this info into the homepage intro.
6. Enable newsletter signup
   • In Settings → Membership, configure your signup options and emails. Mason’s subscribe forms will hook into Ghost’s native subscription flow.
7. Test performance and accessibility
   • Re-run Google PageSpeed and your preferred accessibility audits on your live domain.
   • Fix any regressions introduced by your content (large images, low-contrast text in hero images, etc.).

Rating & recommendation

My rating for Mason Ghost theme: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

Here’s how that breaks down:

• Design & UX: 4.5/5
  • I love the portfolio-first layout and the way the homepage combines a personal intro with a grid of projects.
• Features & flexibility: 3.5/5
  • Perfect for a focused portfolio, but the lack of separate blog vs portfolio templates and missing structured portfolio fields (client, date, problem/solution) hold it back from being a fully featured case-study engine.
• Performance & SEO: 4.5/5
  • The reported PageSpeed scores are excellent, and Ghost’s clean markup gives you an SEO-friendly base.
• Accessibility: 3/5
  • The 83% ADA/WCAG score and 22 issues are fixable, but you’ll need to invest some effort to bring it closer to the safer 95+ range.

Overall, I do recommend buying Mason if:

• Ghost is your platform of choice, and
• Your primary goal is to showcase your work with a minimal, visually strong portfolio, and
• You’re okay with doing light customization for accessibility and case-study content structure.

If you need a heavy editorial setup with multiple blog templates, advanced filters, and richer portfolio metadata, I’d keep reading into the alternatives next.

FAQs about the Mason Ghost theme

Mason Ghost theme alternatives

If you like the idea of a personal/portfolio Ghost site but want slightly different capabilities, these themes are worth a look:

• Rand Ghost theme – A minimalist “magazine meets personal portfolio” theme with around 15 homepage sections and 10 page templates, including timelines, collections, and link-in-bio pages. It’s better suited if you want your writing and projects to share equal weight in a section-based layout.
• Braun Ghost theme – Built by Themex Studio, Braun offers a flexible homepage, 10+ templates (Blog, Works/Case Studies, Courses/Timeline, Books, Resources, Contact), and multiple section elements like testimonials and static text. Choose this if you want a more full-featured personal site around your portfolio.
• Fumio Ghost theme – A sleek portfolio-and-blog theme from Bright Themes that adds project layouts, services and clients sections, team and FAQ blocks, and deep customization options for colors, fonts, and membership pages. Ideal when you need a marketing site plus portfolio plus blog under one roof.
• Naoto Ghost theme – A minimal personal blog and portfolio theme with 15 homepage sections, 10+ templates (Blog, Works, Books, Link in Bio, Series, Timeline), section-based landing pages, and strong support for long-form content with TOC. It’s a great alternative if you like the portfolio focus of Mason but also need a richer blog experience.

Each of these lives on Theme My Blog, so you can compare demos, scores, and editorial reviews side-by-side before deciding what fits your use case best.

Conclusion

If you want a Mason Ghost theme review in one sentence, here it is: Mason is a clean, focused portfolio ghost theme that shines when your priority is to showcase your work on the homepage and keep everything else out of the way.

I recommend it for designers, illustrators, and digital artists who need a simple, SEO-ready project showcase and are comfortable making a few tweaks for accessibility and content structure. If you need a heavy blog plus portfolio combo, the alternatives above may suit you better—but for a lean, visually strong portfolio, Mason is an easy theme to like.