Thematic was a shot across the bow in a Kubrick-theme-dominated world at the time. Clean, elegant, adaptable--it was epic, and if I remember right it led more or less to the Kirby theme which was essentially the blueprint for the Twenty Ten theme. And for years Themeshaper was the best tutorial for theme development, perhaps to be surpassed by that still-sort-of-hidden theme tutorial on developer.wordpress.org.